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Title: Panama and the Canal in Picture and Prose
Author: Abbott, Willis J.
Language: English
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Transcriber’s Notes
Text printed in italics has been transcribed _between underscores_,
bold face text =between equal signs=, and underlined text ~between
tildes~. Small capitals have been replaced with ALL CAPITALS.
More Notes may be found at the end of this text.
[Illustration: PANAMA CANAL AND CANAL ZONE
NOTE: From its Atlantic end at Colon, the Canal runs for 10 miles _due
south_; then its general course is to the eastward into the Pacific.
This is quite contrary to the popular conception of its general
direction and is due to the fact that the Isthmus, at the Canal, bends
to the eastward, so that the Pacific Ocean at this point is south and
east of the Atlantic, as shown by the small insert map at lower left
hand corner of the main map above.]
PANAMA
And the Canal
IN PICTURE AND PROSE
A complete story of Panama, as well as the history, purpose
and promise of its world-famous canal--the most
gigantic engineering undertaking since
the dawn of time
_Approved by leading officials connected with the great enterprise_
By WILLIS J. ABBOT
Author of The Story of Our Navy, American Merchant Ships and Sailors,
Etc.
Water-colors by
E. J. READ and GORDON GRANT
Profusely illustrated by over 600 unique and attractive photographs
taken expressly for this book by our special staff
Published in English and Spanish by
SYNDICATE PUBLISHING COMPANY
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
HAVANA BUENOS AIRES
1913
Copyright 1913, by F. E. Wright
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 5
CHAPTER I. THE FRONT DOOR TO PANAMA 9
Antilla, a New Sugar Port--The Island of Jamaica--Kingston, The
Colonial Capital--Women as Burden Bearers--Characteristics of the
Native Jamaican--Life of the Negro Woman.
CHAPTER II. CRISTOBAL-COLON; AND THE PANAMA RAILROAD 23
The Approach to Colon--The Architecture and Population of
Colon--Railroad Building in a Swamp--The French Come to Colon--The
Beautiful Roosevelt Avenue--Colon Streets in the Early Days--The
Varied Population of Colon--San Blas Indians and Their Cayucas--The
Ghastly Story of the Chinese--Cost and Charges of the Panama Railroad.
CHAPTER III. NOMBRE DE DIOS, PORTO BELLO AND SAN LORENZO 45
The Harbor of Porto Bello--The First Appearance of Balboa--Early
Indian Life in Panama--The Futile Indian Uprising--The First Sight of
the Pacific--The Beginning of Balboa’s Downfall--The Traitor in
Balboa’s Camp--The Character of Vasco Nunez de Balboa--Panama a Link
in Philippine Trade--Flush Times in Porto Bello--The Piratical Raid of
Sir Francis Drake--The Futile Attack on the Treasure Train--The
Appearance of Morgan the Buccaneer--The Pillage of Porto Bello.
CHAPTER IV. SAN LORENZO AND PANAMA 75
The Waterway to San Lorenzo--Approach to San Lorenzo Castle--A Rip Van
Winkle of a Fortress--The Assault of the Buccaneers--The End of Porto
Bello and San Lorenzo.
CHAPTER V. THE SACK OF OLD PANAMA 87
The Advance of the Buccaneers--The Banquet before Panama--The
Buccaneers Triumphant in Battle--The Pirates’ Orgy of Plunder--How
Morgan Plundered His Pirates--The Scene of Morgan’s Great Exploit.
CHAPTER VI. REVOLUTIONS AND THE FRENCH RÉGIME 101
The Scottish Settlement in Panama--Disasters Beset the Scotch
Colonists--The Repeated Revolutions of Panama--Early Projectors of a
Panama Canal--Sea Level or Lock Canal--A Relic of the French
Days--Some of the Finished Work of the French--The Financial
Aberrations of De Lesseps--Yellow Fever’s Toll of French Lives--The
Value of the French Work.
CHAPTER VII. THE UNITED STATES BEGINS WORK 123
Why Panama Wanted Independence--Our Share in the Revolution--A
Revolution Without a Single Battle--Treaty Rights of the United
States--Illustrations of the Magnitude of the Canal Work--The Passage
of the Canal Locks--Spectacular Features of Gatun Lake--The
Abandonment of Canal Towns--The Pacific Terminus of the Canal--The
Forts at the Pacific Entrance.
CHAPTER VIII. THE FORMATIVE PERIOD 147
The Beginning of Work under Wallace--The Absentee Commissioners and
the Red Tape--The Successful War with Yellow Fever--The Change from
Wallace to Stevens--The Varying Estimates of the Canal Cost--The
Resignation of Engineer Stevens.
CHAPTER IX. COL. GOETHALS AT THE THROTTLE 161
What the Colonel Meant by Orders--The Colonel’s Sunday Morning
Court--The Autocratic Power of Col. Goethals--The Panama Work Shows
Governmental Efficiency.
CHAPTER X. GATUN DAM AND LOCKS 171
Atlantic Beginning of the Canal--The Plan of the Gatun Dam--How the
Chagres Current was Blocked--The Spillway, The Nerve Center of Gatun
Lake--The Uses of the Electric Power of Gatun--The Colossal Concrete
Work at Gatun--The Motive Power of the Lock Gates.
CHAPTER XI. GATUN LAKE AND THE CHAGRES RIVER 187
The Native Affection for the Chagres--The Indispensable Native
Cayuca--Keeping the Record of the Chagres--Cruces in Its Day of
Greatness--Animal Life on the Chagres River--A Typical Foreign Laborer
on The Zone.
CHAPTER XII. THE CULEBRA CUT 201
The Great Problem of the Slides--The Physical Characteristics of the
Slide--Some Peculiar Features of the Slides--The Explosive Experience
of Miguel--The Gorgeous Coloring of Culebra--The Perilous Passage of
Culebra Cut--The almost Human Work of the Steam Shovel--The Work of
the Steam Shovellers--The almost Indispensable Track Shifter--The
Industrious Ants of Panama--The End of the Canal at Balboa.
CHAPTER XIII. THE CITY OF PANAMA 224
The First Appearance of Panama City--The Popular Panama
Lottery--Panama’s Cost of Living is High--Scenes in the Panama
Market--The Prevalent Temper of the Panamanians--Why Americans are not
Popular--American Sentiment on the Isthmus--The Public Buildings of
Panama--The Stout Walls of Panama City--Scenes of the Mardi Gras
Carnival--Cock-Fighting and the Liquor Trade--In the Ancient Chiriqui
Prison--The Many Churches of Panama--Panama Clubs and Open Air Life.
CHAPTER XIV. THE SANITATION OF THE ZONE 253
Beginning the Warfare on Mosquitoes--Methods of the Anti-Mosquito
Crusade--Some Humors of the Mosquito War--How the Streams are
Sterilized--Results of the War on Mosquitoes--The Two Great Canal
Commission Hospitals--The System of Free Medical Treatment--The
Pleasant Village of Taboga--The Sanitarium and Leper Colony.
CHAPTER XV. THE REPUBLIC OF PANAMA 273
The Doubtful Soil of Panama--The Simple Study of Native Life--The
Building of the Bridegroom’s House--Labor and Land Titles in
Panama--Agriculture and Temperature in Panama--Rubber and Cocoanuts
Offer Possibilities--The Sport of Shooting Alligators--A Colossal
Agricultural Enterprise--The Banana as an Empire Builder--Why the
American Flag is Rare--Getting the Bananas to Market--David and the
Cattle Country--Gold from the Indian Tombs--Efforts for a System of
Industrial Education.
CHAPTER XVI. THE INDIANS OF PANAMA 305
Marriage Customs of the Indians--The Many Tribes of Panama
Indians--Characteristics of the San Blas Tribe--An
Exclusive Aboriginal People--Family Quarters of the San Blas--Customs
of the Chocos and Guaymies--Peculiarities of the Darien Indians.
CHAPTER XVII. SOCIAL LIFE ON THE CANAL ZONE 320
The Population of the Canal Zone--The Temptations to Matrimony on the
Zone--The Gold and Silver Employees--The Object Lesson of the Canal
Zone--Why It is not at all “Socialistic”--In a Typical Canal Zone
Dwelling--Some Features of Zone Housekeeping--Prices of Food at the
Commissary--The Complicated Social Life of the Zone--Church Work and
the Y. M. C. A.
CHAPTER XVIII. LABOR AND THE GOVERNMENT OF THE ZONE 341
The Colossal Business of the Commissary--The Task of Feeding Forty
Nationalities--The Stern Suppression of the Social Class--Evil Effect
of the Abolition of the Canteen--Some Figures Concerning the
Commissary Service--The International Agreement on the Commissary--The
Police System of the Zone--The School System of the Zone--Agricultural
Possibilities on the Zone--Future Possibilities of the Canal Zone.
CHAPTER XIX. FORTIFICATIONS, TOLLS, COMMERCE AND QUARANTINE 363
Why Fortify the Canal at All?--The Suez Canal no Parallel--Some
Details of the Fortifications--The Mobile Force on the Zone--The
Sufficiency of Fortifications Planned--Effect of the Canal on Trade
Routes--The Railroad Fight on the Canal--The Canal and the Flag--The
First Immediate Advantage of the Canal--The Much-mooted Question of
Tolls--Our Trade with Pacific-Latin America--Time Saved by Panama
Canal Route--The Possible Commerce of the Canal--Some Phases of Our
Foreign Trade--The Need of Our Own Ships and Banks--What Our Merchant
Marine is--The Grave Question of Quarantine.
CHAPTER XX. DIPLOMACY AND POLITICS OF THE CANAL 399
Our Reckoning with Colombia--Our Commercial Interests in South
America--Mutual Interests of the United States and Great Britain--What
the Canal has and will Cost--New Work for the Interstate Commerce
Commission--The Moral Lesson of the Panama Canal.
LIST OF COLORED ILLUSTRATIONS
1 MAP OF PANAMA CANAL AND CANAL ZONE _Facing title page_
FACING PAGE
2 DUKE STREET, KINGSTON, JAMAICA 16
3 GOING TO MARKET 40
4 A NATIVE VILLAGE 72
5 OLD FRENCH CANAL AT MOUNT HOPE 104
6 ANCON HILL FROM THE HARBOR OF PANAMA 128
7 THE WASHING PLACE AT TABOGA 152
8 A NATIVE BAKERY 176
9 THE RIVER AND VILLAGE OF CHAGRES 192
10 THE CULEBRA CUT 216
11 AVENIDA B, PANAMA CITY 232
12 PANAMA BAY FROM ANCON HOSPITAL 256
13 A TYPICAL NATIVE HUT 280
14 VENDOR OF FRUIT AND POTTERY 304
15 OLD LANDING AT TABOGA 336
16 SWIMMING POOL AT PANAMA 368
17 SANTA ANA PLAZA, PANAMA 392
LIST OF BLACK AND WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
1 The Sentinel Tree 5
2 Scene on Otoque Island, Panama Bay 6
3 The Rank, Lush Growth of the Jungle 7
4 Ruins of Old Panama 8
5 Tree Growing out of a Chimney in Jamaica 9
6 Cane River Falls 10
7 The Road to Market 11
8 Sports on Shipboard 12
9 The “Oruba” 12
10 Bog Walk, Jamaica 13
11 Government Buildings, Kingston 14
12 King Street, Kingston, Jamaica 15
13 Jamaica, Where Motoring is Good 16
14 Women on the Way to Market 17
15 A Yard and its Tenants 18
16 Coaling Steamships 19
17 Market Women and their Donkeys 20
18 One Way of Carrying Bananas 21
19 “Gwine to de Big Job” 22
20 Toro Point Light 23
21 Toro Point Breakwater 24
22 The New Cristobal Docks 24
23 “Palms Which Blend With the Sea” 25
24 Colon in 1884 26
25 Fire-Fighting Force at Cristobal 27
26 The New Washington Hotel 28
27 The Only Stone Church in Colon 28
28 Nature of Country near Colon 29
29 Panama Pottery Sellers 30
30 Hindoo Laborers on the Canal 30
31 San Blas Boats at Early Dawn 31
32 San Blas Indian Boys 31
33 San Blas Lugger Putting Out to Sea 31
34 The Atlantic Fleet Visits the Isthmus 32
35 Roosevelt Avenue, Cristobal, About to Lose its Beauty 33
36 The De Lesseps Palace 34
37 The National Game--Cock-Fighting 34
38 How the Jungle Works 35
39 “Bottle Alley” 36
40 D Street, Colon, Paved 37
41 Bachelor Quarters at Toro Point 38
42 A Colon Water Carrier 39
43 An Open Sewer in a Colon Street 39
44 By a Coclé Brook 40
45 The Mangroves Marching on Stilt-like Roots 40
46 A Picturesque Inlet of the Caribbean 41
47 Childish Beauty Without Art 42
48 A Corner of Mount Hope Cemetery 42
49 The Soulful Eyes of the Tropics 43
50 Market Day at David 43
51 Scene on Almirante Bay 44
52 Modern Porto Bello from Across the Bay 45
53 Typical Native Hut in Porto Bello District 46
54 Entrance to Porto Bello Harbor, from Spanish Fort 47
55 Bullock Cart on the Savanna Road 47
56 Modern Indian, Darien Region 48
57 Native Family in Chorrera 49
58 Seventeenth Century Ruin at Porto Bello 50
59 Street in Modern Porto Bello 51
60 Ancient Trail from Porto Bello 52
61 Spanish Fort at Entrance to Porto Bello Harbor 53
62 A Group of Cholo Indians 54
63 Natives Grinding Rice in a Mortar Owned by All 55
64 Family Travel on the Panama Trail 56
65 Deserted Native Hut 57
66 What They Still Call a Road in Panama 58
67 Outdoor Life of the Natives 59
68 Native Hut and Open-Air Kitchen 60
69 Cocoanut Grove on the Caribbean Coast 61
70 Canal Commission Stone Crusher, Porto Bello 61
71 Native Huts near Porto Bello 62
72 An Indian Family of the Darien 62
73 Ruined Spanish Fort at Porto Bello 63
74 San Blas Luggers at Anchor 64
75 The Teeth of the Tropics 64
76 Native Bridge in the Darien 65
77 Choco Indian Girls 66
78 Indian Huts near Porto Bello 67
79 Country Back of Porto Bello 68
80 Native Women of the Savannas Bearing Burdens 68
81 Camina Reale, or Royal Road near Porto Bello 69
82 A Lady of the Savanna 70
83 Native Children, Panama Province 70
84 Bull-Rider and Native Car at Bouquette, Chiriqui 71
85 The Indians Call Her a Witch 72
86 A Cuna Cuna Family near Porto Bello 72
87 A Trail near Porto Bello 73
88 A Cholo Mother and Daughter 73
89 A Group of Cuepa Trees 74
90 Mouth of the Chagres River 75
91 Mouth of the Chagres from the Fort 76
92 The Sally-Port at San Lorenzo 77
93 Church at Chagres 78
94 Old Spanish Magazine 79
95 Spanish Ruins, Porto Bello 79
96 Our Guide at San Lorenzo 80
97 The Author at San Lorenzo 80
98 Looking Up the Chagres from San Lorenzo 81
99 The True Native Social Center 82
100 Tropical Foliage on the Caribbean 83
101 On the Upper Chagres 84
102 Native Panama Woman 84
103 A Character of Colon 85
104 Woman of the Chagres Region 85
105 Near a Convent at Old Panama 87
106 Casa Reale or King’s House 88
107 The Ruined Tower of San Augustine 89
108 Wayside Shrine on the Savanna Road 90
109 Arched Bridge at Old Panama, Almost 400 Years Old 91
110 Foliage on the Canal Zone 92
111 The Chagres Above San Lorenzo 93
112 In the Crypt of Old San Augustine 94
113 A Woman of Old Panama 94
114 Wash Day at Taboga 95
115 A Street in Cruces 96
116 Breaking Waves at Old Panama 96
117 Old Bell at Remedios, 1682 97
118 The Beetling Cliffs of the Upper Chagres 97
119 The Roots Reach Down Seeking for Soil 98
120 Bluff near Toro Point 99
121 “Whether the Tree or the Wall is Stouter is a Problem” 100
122 San Pablo Lock in French Days 101
123 Part of the Sea Wall at Panama 102
124 The Pelicans in the Bay of Panama 103
125 The Road from Panama to La Boca 104
126 The City Park of Colon 105
127 Children in a Native Hut 105
128 The Water Front of Panama 106
129 The Water Gate of Panama 106
130 Entrance to Mount Hope Cemetery 107
131 Cathedral Plaza, Panama 108
132 Avenida Centrale 109
133 Ancon Hill at Sunset 110
134 Abandoned French Machinery on the Canal 110
135 Overwhelmed by the Jungle 111
136 A Lottery Ticket Seller 112
137 Machinery Seemingly as Hopeless as this was Recovered, Cleaned
and set to Work 112
138 The Power of the Jungle 113
139 La Folie Dingler 114
140 Near the Pacific Entrance to the Canal 114
141 Where the French Did Their Best Work 115
142 An Old Spanish Church 116
143 Juncture of French and American Canals 116
144 Part of the Toll of Life 117
145 The Ancon Hospital Grounds 118
146 A Sunken Railroad 118
147 A Zone Working Village 119
148 Negro Quarters, French Town of Empire 120
149 Filth that would Drive a Berkshire from his Sty 121
150 Canal Valley near Pedro Miguel 122
151 Panama Soldiers Going to Church 123
152 The Official Umpire, Cocle 124
153 The Man and the Machine 125
154 Landing Pigs for Market 126
155 The Trail near Culebra 126
156 In the Banana Country, on the Coast near Bocas del Toro 127
157 The Best Residence Section, Colon 128
158 The Old Fire Cistern, Panama 129
159 The Two Presidents: Roosevelt and Amador 130
160 Cholo Chief and His Third Wife 131
161 Native House and Group at Puerta Pinas 131
162 What They Call a Street in Taboga 132
163 Hindoo Merchants on the Zone 132
164 Chamé Beach, Pacific Coast 133
165 French Dry Dock, Cristobal 133
166 What the Work Expended on the Canal Might Have Done 134
167 A Graphic Comparison 134
168 What the Panama Concrete Would Do 135
169 Proportions of Some of the Canal Work 135
170 The “Spoil” from Culebra Cut Would Do This 135
171 In a Typical Lock 135
172 Lock at Pedro Miguel Under Construction 137
173 Range Tower at Pacific Entrance 138
174 Bird’s Eye View of Pedro Miguel Locks 138
175 The Vegetable Martyrs 139
176 Native Street at Taboga 140
177 Gamboa Bridge with Chagres at Flood 141
178 The Y. M. C. A. Club House at Gatun 141
179 Working in Culebra Cut 142
180 Miraflores Lock in March, 1913 143
181 Naos, Perico and Flamenco Islands to be Fortified 143
182 Beginning of New Balboa Docks 144
183 The Old Pacific Mail Docks at Balboa 144
184 The Pacific Gateway 145
185 Completed Canal at Corozal 146
186 Tunnel for the Obispo Diversion Canal 147
187 The Two Colonels 148
188 A Walk at Ancon 149
189 In the Hospital Grounds 149
190 French Cottages on the Water Front, Cristobal 150
191 Pay Day for the Black Labor 151
192 In Wallace’s Time 152
193 The Fumigation Brigade 153
194 Typical Screened Houses 154
195 A Street After Paving 154
196 Stockade for Petty Canal Zone Offenders 155
197 Hospital Buildings, United Fruit Co. 155
198 Beginning the New Docks, Cristobal 156
199 A Back Street in Colon 157
200 Steam Shovel at Work 158
201 The Balboa Road 158
202 A Drill Barge at Work 159
203 Pacific Entrance to the Canal 160
204 Col. Goethals at His Desk 161
205 Railway Station at Gatun 162
206 President Taft Arrives 162
207 Col. Goethals Reviewing the Marines at Camp Elliott 163
208 President Taft and “the Colonel” 164
209 Big Guns for Canal Defence 164
210 Col. Goethals Encourages the National Game 165
211 Old French Ladder Dredges Still Used 166
212 The Colonel’s Daily Stroll 166
213 A Side Drill Crew at Work 167
214 The Colonel’s Fireworks 168
215 A Heavy Blast Under Water 168
216 The Colonel’s Daily Meal 169
217 “The Goethals’ Own” in Action 169
218 Bas Obispo End of Culebra Cut 170
219 Entrance to Gatun Locks 171
220 I. Colon: These Pictures in Order form a Panorama of the Colon
Water Front 172
221 II. Colon: Part of the Residential District on the Water Front 173
222 III. Colon: Panama Railroad and Royal Mail Docks 173
223 IV. Colon: The De Lesseps House in the Distance shows Location
of New Docks 173
224 South Approach Wall, Gatun Locks 174
225 Gatun Locks Opening into the Lake 174
226 Gatun Lake Seen from the Dam 175
227 Bird’s Eye View of Gatun Dam 175
228 Construction Work on Gatun Dam 176
229 Pumping Mud into the Core of Gatun Dam 176
230 Gatun Upper Lock 177
231 Gatun Center Light 177
232 Emergency Gates 177
233 Spillway Under Construction 178
234 Partly Completed Spillway, 1913 179
235 The Giant Penstocks of the Spillway 180
236 The Spillway at High Water 180
237 Lock Gates Approaching Completion 181
238 The Water Knocking at Gatun Gates 182
239 Wall of Gatun Lock Showing Arched Construction 182
240 Traveling Cranes at Work 183
241 Building a Monolith 183
242 A Culvert in the Lock Wall 184
243 Diagram of Lock-Gate Machinery 184
244 Towing Locomotive Climbing to Upper Lock 184
245 The Heavy Wheel Shown is the “Bull Wheel” 185
246 The Tangled Maze of Steel Skeletons that are a Lock in the
Making 186
247 The Chagres, Showing Observer’s Car 187
248 Fluviograph at Bohio, now Submerged 188
249 Automatic Fluviograph on Gatun Lake 188
250 The Village of Bohio, now Submerged 189
251 Steps Leading to Fluviograph Station at Alhajuela 190
252 A Light House in the Jungle 190
253 The Riverside Market at Matachin 191
254 Railroad Bridge Over the Chagres at Gamboa 192
255 A Quiet Beach on the Chagres 192
256 Poling Up the Rapids 193
257 Construction Work on the Spillway 193
258 Water Gates in Lock Wall 194
259 The Lake Above Gatun 194
260 How They Gather at the River 195
261 Washerwomen’s Shelters by the River 196
262 A Ferry on the Upper Chagres 196
263 The Much Prized Iguana 197
264 Cruces--A Little Town with a Long History 198
265 A Native Charcoal Burner 198
266 The Natives’ Afternoon Tea 199
267 Piers of the Abandoned Panama Railway 200
268 Working on Three Levels 201
269 The Original Culebra Slide 202
270 Slide on West Bank of the Canal near Culebra 203
271 Attacking the Cucaracha Slide 204
272 Diagram of Culebra Cut Slides 205
273 A Rock Slide near Empire 205
274 The Author at Culebra Cut 206
275 Cutting at Base of Contractors Hill 206
276 A Rock Slide at Las Cascades 207
277 Slicing Off the Chief Engineer’s Office 208
278 How Tourists see the Cut 208
279 Jamaicans Operating a Compressed Air Drill 209
280 Handling Rock in Ancon Quarry 209
281 In the Cucaracha Slide 210
282 Brow of Gold Hill, Culebra Cut 211
283 A Dirt-Spreader at Work 212
284 “Every Bite Recorded at Headquarters” 212
285 A Lidgerwood Unloader at Work 213
286 The Track Shifter in Action 213
287 One of the Colonel’s Troubles 214
288 The Sliced-off Hill at Ancon 214
289 A Lock-Chamber from Above 215
290 When the Obispo Broke in 215
291 Ungainly Monsters of Steel Working with Human Skill 216
292 Building an Upper Tier of Locks 217
293 Traveling Cranes that Bear the Brunt of Burden Carrying 217
294 The Floor of a Lock 218
295 Excavating with a Monitor as Californians Dig Gold 218
296 A Steam Shovel in Operation 219
297 Bird’s Eye View of the Miraflores Locks 220
298 The Rock-Break that Admitted the Bas Obispo 220
299 An Ant’s Nest on the Savanna 221
300 A Termite Ant’s Nest 221
301 Deep Sea Dredge at Balboa 222
302 Proportions of the Locks 222
303 The Great Fill at Balboa Where the Culebra Spoil is Dumped 223
304 Panama Bay from Ancon Hill 224
305 Santa Ana Plaza 225
306 Panama from the Sea Wall; Cathedral Towers in Distance 226
307 The Bull Ring; Bull Fights are now Prohibited 227
308 The Panama Water Front 227
309 The Lottery Office in the Bishop’s Palace 228
310 San Domingo Church and the Flat Arch 228
311 Chiriqui Cattle at the Abattoir 229
312 The President’s House; A Fine Type of Panama Residence 229
313 The Fish Market 230
314 San Blas Boats at the Market Place 230
315 The Vegetable Market 230
316 The Market on the Curb 231
317 Where the Flies get Busy 231
318 Cayucas on Market Day 231
319 Panama from the Bay; Ancon Hill in the Background 232
320 Pottery Vendors near the Panama City Market 233
321 From a Panama Balcony 234
322 The First Communion 235
323 Marriage is an Affair of Some Pomp 235
324 The Manly Art in the Tropics 236
325 A Group of National Police 236
326 Taboga, the Pleasure Place of Panama 237
327 Santa Ana Church, 1764 237
328 The Panama National Institute 238
329 The Municipal Building 239
330 The National Palace and Theater 239
331 Salient Angle of Landward Wall 240
332 Boys Skating on Sea Wall 240
333 Vaults in the Panama Cemetery 241
334 Ruins of San Domingo Church 242
335 Some Carnival Floats 243
336 The Ancient Cathedral 244
337 The Police Station, Panama 245
338 Church of Our Lady of Mercy (La Merced) 245
339 Young America on Panama Beach 246
340 Ready to Control the Pacific 246
341 The Flowery Chiriqui Prison 247
342 The Market for Shell Fish 248
343 The Cathedral and Plaza 249
344 In a Panama Park 250
345 Salvation Army in Panama 250
346 Costume de Rigueur for February 250
347 Bust of Lieut. Napoleon B. Wyse 251
348 On Panama’s Bathing Beach 252
349 Quarantine Station at Pacific Entrance to Canal 252
350 Col. W. C. Gorgas 253
351 What Col. Gorgas Had to Correct 254
352 Administration Building, Housing the Sanitary Department 254
353 Dredging a Colon Street 255
354 The War on Mosquitoes. I 256
355 The War on Mosquitoes. II 256
356 The War on Mosquitoes. III 257
357 The War on Mosquitoes. IV 257
358 Sanitary Work in a Village 258
359 The Mosquito Chloroformer’s Outfit 259
360 The Mosquito Chloroformer at Work 259
361 Ancon Hospital as Received from the French 260
362 The Canal Commission Hospital at Colon Built by the French 261
363 French Village of Empire after Cleaning up by Americans 262
364 The Bay of Taboga from the Sanitarium 262
365 The Little Pango Boats Come to Meet You 263
366 Old Church at Taboga 263
367 The Rio Grande Reservoir 263
368 In Picturesque Taboga 264
369 In the Grounds of Ancon Hospital 265
370 The Sanitarium at Taboga Inherited from the French 266
371 A Fête Day at Taboga 266
372 Feather Palm at Ancon 267
373 Taboga from the Bathing Beach 267
374 Taboga is Furthermore the Coney Island of Panama 268
375 Burden Bearers on the Savanna 269
376 Hotel at Bouquette, Chiriqui 270
377 A Bit of Ancon Hospital Grounds 270
378 The Chief Industry of the Natives is Fishing 271
379 Nurses’ Quarters at Ancon 271
380 The Leper Settlement on Panama Bay 272
381 The Gorge of Salamanca 273
382 Native Family in Chorrera 274
383 A Street in Penemone 275
384 The Hotel at David 275
385 View of Bocas del Toro 276
386 Vista on the Rio Grande 276
387 At the Cattle Port of Aguadulce 277
388 The Royal Road near Panama 277
389 The Meeting Place of the Cayucas 278
390 Banana Market at Matachin 279
391 In the Chiriqui Country 280
392 Banana Plant; Note Size of Man 280
393 Construction of Roof of a Native House 281
394 A Native Living Room and Stairway 281
395 Rubber Plantation near Cocle 282
396 Bolivar Park at Bocas del Toro 282
397 A Ford near Ancon 283
398 Old Banana Trees 284
399 Pineapples in the Field 284
400 Waiting for the Boat 285
401 Country House of a Cacao Planter at Choria 285
402 Started for Market 286
403 Loading Cattle at Aguadulce 286
404 Dolega in the Chiriqui Province 287
405 Mahogany Trees with Orchids 287
406 Bayano Cedar, Eight Feet Diameter 288
407 The Cacao Tree 288
408 Street in David 288
409 In the Banana Country 289
410 Market Place at Ancon 290
411 Fruit Company Steamer at Wharf 291
412 United Fruit Company Train 291
413 Sanitary Office, Bocas del Toro 291
414 A Pile of Rejected Bananas 292
415 A Perfect Bunch of Bananas 292
416 The Astor Yacht at Cristobal 293
417 The Bay of Bocas 293
418 Bringing Home the Crocodile 294
419 A Morning’s Shooting 294
420 On Crocodile Creek 295
421 The End of the Crocodile 295
422 Above the Clouds, Chiriqui Volcano 296
423 The Chiriqui Volcano 296
424 Native Market Boat at Chorrera 297
425 In Bouquette Valley, the Most Fertile Part of Chiriqui 297
426 Coffee Plant at Bouquette 298
427 Drying the Coffee Beans 298
428 Drying Cloths for Coffee 299
429 Breadfruit Tree 299
430 Primitive Sugar Mill 300
431 Chiriqui Natives in an Ox-Cart 300
432 Proclaiming a Law at David 301
433 The Cattle Range near David 301
434 Despoiling Old Guaymi Graves 302
435 A Day’s Shooting, Game Mostly Monkeys 302
436 The Government School of Hat Making 303
437 Beginning a Panama Hat 303
438 Coffee Plantation at Bouquette 304
439 Work of Indian Students in the National Institute 304
440 The Crater of the Chiriqui Volcano 304
441 Trapping an Aborigine 305
442 Native Village on Panama Bay 306
443 A River Landing Place 306
444 The Falls at Chorrera 307
445 On the Rio Grande 307
446 Old Spanish Church, Chorrera 308
447 The Church at Ancon 308
448 The Pearl Island Village of Taboga 309
449 Native Village at Capera 309
450 A Choco Indian in Full Costume 310
451 Some San Blas Girls 311
452 Chief Don Carlos of the Chocoes and His Son 312
453 The Village of Playon Grand, Eighty-five Miles East of the
Canal 312
454 San Blas Woman in Daily Garb 313
455 A Girl of the Choco Tribe 313
456 Daughter of Chief Don Carlos 313
457 Native Bridge over the Caldera River 314
458 Guaymi Indian Man 315
459 Indian Girl of the Darien 316
460 Choco Indian of Sambu Valley 317
461 Panamanian Father and Child 318
462 Choco Indian in Every-day Dress 319
463 A Squad of Canal Zone Police Officers 320
464 A Primitive Sugar Mill 321
465 Vine-clad Family Quarters 321
466 Quarters of a Bachelor Teacher 321
467 Main Street at Gorgona 322
468 In the Lobby of a Y. M. C. A. Club 323
469 Street Scene in Culebra 324
470 Young America at Play 324
471 Hindoo Merchants at a Zone Town 325
472 The Native Mills Grind Slowly 325
473 Commission Road near Empire 326
474 The Fire Force of Cristobal 327
475 Orchids on Gov. Thatcher’s Porch 328
476 The Catasetum Scurra 329
477 Married Quarters at Corozal 330
478 Fighting the Industrious Ant 330
479 Foliage on the Zone 331
480 The Chief Commissary at Cristobal 332
481 What the Slide Did to the Railroad 333
482 Not from Jamaica but the Y. M. C. A. 334
483 A Bachelor’s Quarters 334
484 The Tivoli Hotel 335
485 The Grapefruit of Panama 335
486 Pure Panama, Pure Indian and all Between 336
487 Interior of Gatun Y. M. C. A. Club 337
488 Y. M. C. A. Club at Gatun 337
489 Marine Post at Camp Elliott 338
490 Tourists in the Culebra Cut 338
491 Lobby in Tivoli Hotel 339
492 Altar in Gatun Catholic Church 340
493 La Boca from the City 341
494 At Los Angosturas 342
495 The Water Front at Colon 342
496 Negro Quarters at Cristobal 343
497 Labor Train at Ancon 344
498 Negro Sleeping Quarters 344
499 A Workmen’s Sleeping Car 345
500 A Workmen’s Dining Car 345
501 Old French Bucket Dredges 346
502 Old French Bridge at Bas Obispo 346
503 The Relaxation of Pay Day 347
504 Bas Obispo as the French Left it 347
505 Convicts Building a Commission Road 348
506 Construction Work Showing Concrete Carriers and Moulds 349
507 How the Natives Gather Cocoanuts 350
508 Looking Down Miraflores Locks 350
509 Hospital at Bocas 351
510 New American Docks at Cristobal 351
511 Ox Method of Transportation 352
512 Road Making by Convicts 352
513 Entrance to Bouquette Valley 353
514 Cocoanut Palms near Ancon 353
515 Native Religious Procession at Chorrera 354
516 Opening the Cocoanut 354
517 Rice Stacked for Drying 355
518 Bullock Cart in Chorrera 355
519 Sun Setting in the Atlantic at Lighthouse Point 356
520 The Fruitful Mango Tree 357
521 Completed Canal near Gatun 358
522 Traveling Cranes at Miraflores 358
523 The Review at One of the Roosevelt Receptions 359
524 Pacific Flats Left by Receding Tide 359
525 A Whaler at Pearl Island 360
526 An Old Well at Chiriqui 360
527 A Good Yield of Cocoanuts 361
528 Cholo Girls at the Stream 361
529 Shipping at Balboa Docks 362
530 Explaining it to the Boss 363
531 Spanish Monastery at Panama 364
532 Choco Indian of Sanbu Valley 364
533 The Rising Generation 365
534 Ancon Hill, Where Americans Live in Comfort 365
535 Gatun Lake, Showing Small Floating Islands 366
536 A Spectacular Blast 367
537 The First View of Colon 367
538 A Porch at Culebra 368
539 Avenida Centrale, Panama, near the Station 368
540 In a Chiriqui Town 369
541 A Mountain River in Chiriqui 369
542 Biting Through a Slide: Five Cubic Yards per Bite 370
543 Commissary Building and Front Street, Colon 371
544 Pedro Miguel Locks 372
545 Detail Construction of a Lock 373
546 A Group of Guaymi Girls 374
547 A Zone Sign of Civilization 374
548 Part of the Completed Canal 375
549 His Morning Tub 375
550 Native Girl, Chorrera Province 376
551 Native Boy, Chorrera Province 376
552 Park at David 377
553 Main Street, Chorrera 377
554 A Placid Back Water in Chiriqui 378
555 Gatun Lake. Floating Islands Massed Against Trestle 379
556 Guide Wall at Miraflores 380
557 Poling Over the Shallows 381
558 The Spillway Almost Complete 381
559 San Blas Lugger in Port 382
560 The Beginning of a Slide 382
561 “Making the Dirt Fly” 383
562 The Happy Children of the Zone 383
563 Map of the Panama Cutoff 385
564 An Eruption of the Canal Bed 386
565 Culebra Cut on a Hazy Day 388
566 Bird’s-Eye View of Miraflores Lock 389
567 Handling Broken Rock 390
568 Lock Construction Showing Conduits 390
569 Traveling Crane Handling Concrete in Lock-Building 391
570 Tivoli Hotel from Hospital Grounds 392
571 Mestizo Girl of Chorrera 392
572 How Corn is Ground 393
573 They Used to do This in New England 393
574 Pile-Driver and Dredge at Balboa Dock 394
575 Giant Cement Carriers at Work 395
576 Tracks Ascending from Lower to Upper Lock 396
577 Col. Goethals’ House at Culebra 397
578 Electric Towing Locomotives on a Lock 398
579 A Church in Chorrera 399
580 A Native Kitchen 400
581 Native House in Penomene 400
582 Giant Cacti Often Used for Hedging 401
583 A Street in Chorrera 401
584 The Town of Empire, Soon to be Abandoned 402
585 The Panama Railroad Bridge at Gamboa 403
586 A Street in Chorrera 404
587 A Pearl Island Village 404
588 Diagram of Comparative Excavations by the French and Americans
in Culebra Cut 405
589 View of Pedro Miguel Locks Nearing Completion 405
590 Native Woman, Cocle 406
591 River Village in Chiriqui 406
592 The Pearl Island Village of Saboga 406
593 The Tug Bohio with Barges in Middle Gatun Lock 408
594 Looking Down Canal from Miraflores Lock to the Pacific 408
595 Culebra Cut Partially Filled with Water 409
596 Floating Islands in Gatun Lock Entrance 410
597 The First Boat Through. I. 411
598 The Flag in Two Oceans 412
599 The Continent’s Backbone Broken 413
600 The First Boat Through. II. 414
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY F. E. WRIGHT, “PANAMA AND THE CANAL”
INTRODUCTION
Panama. They say the word means “a place of many fishes,” but there is
some dissension about the exact derivation of the name of the now
severed Isthmus. Indeed dissension, quarrels, wars and massacres have
been the prime characteristics of Panama for four hundred years. “A
place of many battles” would be a more fitting significance for the name
of this tiny spot where man has been doing ceaseless battle with man
since history rose to record the conflicts. As deadly as the wars
between men of hostile races, has been the unceasing struggle between
man and nature.
You will get some faint idea of the toll of life taken in this conflict
if from Cristobal you will drive out to the picturesque cemetery at
Mount Hope and look upon the almost interminable vista of little white
headstones. Each marks the last resting place of some poor fellow fallen
in the war with fever, malaria and all of tropic nature’s fierce and
fatal allies against all conquering man. That war is never ended. The
English and the Spaniards have laid down their arms. Cimmaroon and
conquistadore, pirate and buccaneer no longer steal stealthily along the
narrow jungle trails. But let man forget for a while his vigilance and
the rank, lush growth of the jungle creeps over his clearings, his
roads, his machinery, enveloping all in morphic arms of vivid green,
delicate and beautiful to look upon, but tough, stubborn and fiercely
resistant when attacked. Poisoned spines guard the slender tendrils that
cling so tenaciously to every vantage point. Insects innumerable are
sheltered by the vegetable chevaux-de-frise and in turn protect it from
the assaults of any human enemy. Given a few months to reëstablish
itself and the jungle, once subdued, presents to man again a defiant and
an almost impenetrable front. We boast that we have conquered nature on
the Isthmus, but we have merely won a truce along a comparatively narrow
strip between the oceans. Eternal vigilance will be the price of safety
even there.
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier. Courtesy American Geographic
Magazine. Washington._
THE SENTINEL TREE]
If that country alone is happy whose history is uninteresting, then
sorrow must have been the ordained lot of Panama. Visited first by
Columbus in 1502, at which time the great navigator put forth every
effort to find a strait leading through to the East Indies, it has
figured largely in the pages of history ever since. Considerable cities
of Spanish foundation rose there while our own Jamestown and Plymouth
were still unimagined. The Spaniards were building massive walls,
erecting masonry churches, and paving royal roads down there in the
jungle long before the palisades and log huts of Plymouth rose on the
sandy shores of Cape Cod Bay. If the ruins of the first city of Panama,
draped with tropical vines, are all that remain of that once royal city,
its successor founded in 1673 still stands with parts of the original
walls sturdily resisting the onslaught of time.
It appears there are certain advantages about geographical littleness.
If Panama had been big the eyes of the world would never have been
fastened upon it. Instinctively Columbus sought in each of its bays,
opening from the Caribbean that strait which should lead to far Cathay.
Seeking the same mythical passage Balboa there climbed a hill where
“--with eagle eyes,
He star’d at the Pacific--and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise
Silent upon a peak in Darien.”
Hope of a natural strait abandoned, the narrowness of the Isthmus made
it the shortest route for Cortez, Pizarro and other famous Spanish
robbers and murderers to follow in their quest for the gold of the
Incas. As the Spaniards spoiled Peru, so the buccaneers and other
pirates, belonging to foreign nations, robbed and murdered the
Spaniards. The gold fever filled the narrow Isthmus full of graves, and
of moldering bodies for which there was not even hasty sepulture. In
time the Peruvian hoards were exhausted, Spaniards and Englishmen,
buccaneers and pirates vanished. Then came a new invasion--this time by
a nation unknown in the days of the Great Trade and the Royal Road. Gold
had been discovered in California, and now troops of Americans fought
their way through the jungle, and breasted the rapids of the Chagres
River. They sought gold as had Pizarro and Cortez, but they sought it
with spade and pan, not with sword and musket. In their wake came the
Panama Railroad, a true pioneer of international trade. Then sprung up
once more the demand for the waterway across the neck which Columbus had
sought in vain.
The story of the inception and completion of the canal is the truly
great chapter in the history of Panama. Not all the gold from poor Peru
that Pizarro sent across the Isthmus to fatten the coffers of kings or
to awaken the cupidity and cunning of the buccaneers equals what the
United States alone has expended to give to the trade of the world the
highway so long and so fruitlessly sought. An act of unselfish bounty,
freely given to all the peoples of the earth, comes to obliterate at
last the long record of international perfidy, piracy and plunder which
is the history of Panama.
[Illustration: SCENE ON OTOQUE ISLAND, PANAMA BAY]
This book is being written in the last days of constructive work on the
Panama Canal. The tens of thousands of workmen, the hundreds of officers
are preparing to scatter to their homes in all parts of the world. The
pleasant and hospitable society of the Zone of which I have written is
breaking up. Villages are being abandoned, and the water of Gatun Lake
is silently creeping up and the green advance guard of the jungle
swiftly stealing over the forsaken ground. While this book is yet new
much that I have written of as part of the program of the future will
indeed have become part of the record of the past.
[Illustration: THE RANK, LUSH GROWTH OF THE JUNGLE]
I think that anyone who visited the Canal Zone during the latter years
of construction work will have carried away with him a very pleasant and
lively recollection of a social life and hospitality that was quite
ideal. The official centers at Culebra and Ancon, the quarters of the
army at Camp Otis and the navy and marine corps at Camp Elliott were
ever ready to entertain the visitor from the states and his enjoyment
was necessarily tinged with regret that the charming homes thrown open
to him were but ephemeral, and that the passage of the first ship
through the canal would mark the beginning of their dismantling and
abandonment. The practiced traveler in every clime will find this
eagerness of those who hold national outposts, whether ours in the
Philippines, or the British in India and Hong Kong, to extend the glad
hand of welcome to one from home, but nowhere have I found it so
thoroughly the custom as on the Canal Zone. No American need fear
loneliness who goes there.
In the chapter on “Social Life on the Canal Zone” I have tried to depict
this colonial existence, so different from the life of the same people
when in “the states” and yet so full of a certain “hominess” after all.
It does not seem to me that we Americans cling to our home customs when
on foreign stations quite so tenaciously as do the British--though I
observed that the Americans on the Zone played baseball quite as
religiously as the British played cricket. Perhaps we are less
tenacious of afternoon tea than they, but women’s clubs flourish on the
Zone as they do in Kansas, while as for bridge it proceeds as
uninterruptedly as the flow of the dirt out of the Culebra Cut.
Nobody could return from the Zone without a desire to express thanks for
the hospitalities shown him and the author is fortunate in possessing
the opportunity to do so publicly. Particularly do I wish to acknowledge
indebtedness or aid in the preparation of this book to Col. George W.
Goethals, Chairman and Engineer in Chief, and to Col. W. C. Gorgas,
Commissioner and Chief Sanitary Officer. It goes without saying that
without the friendly aid and coöperation of Col. Goethals no adequate
description of the canal work and the life of the workers could ever be
written. To the then Secretary of War, Hon. Henry L. Stimson, under
whose able administration of the Department of War much of the canal
progress noted in this book was made, the author is indebted for
personal and official introductions, and to Hon. John Barrett, one time
United States Minister to Colombia and now Director General of the Pan
American Union, much is owed for advice and suggestion from a mind
richly stored with Latin-American facts.
On the Canal Zone Hon. Joseph B. Bishop, Secretary of the Isthmian Canal
Commission, Hon. Maurice H. Thatcher, Civil Governor, and Mr. H. H.
Rousseau, the naval member of the Commission, were particularly helpful.
Thanks are cordially extended to Prof. F. A. Gause, the superintendent
of schools, who has built up on the Canal Zone an educational system
that cannot fail to affect favorably the schools of the surrounding
Republic of Panama; to Mr. Walter J. Beyer, the engineer in charge of
lighthouse construction, and to Mr. A. B. Dickson who, by his active and
devoted work in the development of the Y. M. C. A. clubs on the Zone,
has created a feature of its social life which is absolutely
indispensable.
The illustration of a book of this nature would be far from complete
were the work of professional photographers alone relied upon. Of the
army of amateurs who have kindly contributed to its pages I wish to
thank Prof. H. Pittier of the Department of Agriculture, Prof. Otto
Lutz, Department of Natural Science, Panama National Institute; Mr. W.
Ryall Burtis, of Freehold, N. J.; Mr. Stewart Hancock Elliott, of
Norwalk, Conn.; Mr. A. W. French, and Dr. A. J. Orenstein of the
Department of Sanitation.
The opening of the Panama Canal does not merely portend a new era in
trade, or the end of the epoch of trial and struggle on the Isthmus. It
has a finality such as have few of the great works of man. Nowhere on
this globe are there left two continents to be severed; two oceans to be
united. Canals are yet to be dug, arms of the sea brought together. We
may yet see inland channels from Boston to Galveston, and from Chicago
to New York navigable by large steamships. But the union of the
Mediterranean and the Red Sea at Suez, and the Atlantic and Pacific at
Panama stand as man’s crowning achievements in remodeling God’s world.
As Ambassador James Bryce, speaking of the Panama Canal, put it, “It is
the greatest liberty Man has ever taken with Nature.”
[Illustration: RUINS OF OLD PANAMA]
CHAPTER I
THE FRONT DOOR TO PANAMA
The gray sun of a bitter February day was sinking in a swirling sea as
the ship doggedly plowed its way southward along the New Jersey coast.
One after another the beacons that guard that perilous strip of sand
twinkled out, and one after another voyagers unused to ocean’s stormiest
moods silently disappeared into secretive cabins. “It may be a stern and
rockbound coast,” said one lady with poetic reminiscence, “but I wish I
was on it!” For it must be set down as a melancholy truth that the
voyage from New York to Colon is as a rule tempestuous.
Most who seek the Canal Zone as mere sightseers will choose winter for
the trip, at which time wintry gales are the rule as far south as the
Bahamas--after which the long smooth rollers of the tropical ocean will
sufficiently try the unaccustomed stomach even though the breezes which
accompany them be as mild as those of Araby the blest. In brief, to
reach in winter our newest possession you must brave the ordinary
discomforts of a rough voyage, and three days of biting cold weather as
well, unless you sail from New Orleans, or the terminus of Mr. Flagler’s
new over-sea railroad at Key West.
Despite its isthmian character, the Canal Zone, Uncle Sam’s most
southerly outpost, may be called an island, for the travelers’ purpose.
True it is bordered on but two sides by water, and thus far violates the
definition of an island. But it is only to be reached by water. The
other two sides are walled in by the tangled jungle where vegetation
grows so rank and lush that animal life is stunted and beaten in the
struggle for existence by the towering palms, clustering ferns and
creeping vines. Only things that crawl on their bellies like the serpent
accursed in Eden grow to their fullest estate in this network of
rustling green. Lions there are, by the talk of the natives at least,
but when you encounter them they turn out to be mere stunted specimens
of our northern wild cat. The deer, rarely met, are dwarfed but are the
largest animals to be found in the jungle, though one hears reports of
giant boas. Indeed the remnants of the age of reptiles are large to our
eyes, though puny in comparison with the giants that scientists
christened, long centuries after they were extinct and unable to
protest, with such names as ichthyosaurus. You will still find lizards
or iguana, three to five feet long, if your search of the jungle be
thorough. The tapir, or ant eater, too, grows to huge size. But it is
not dread of wild animals that keeps man from penetrating the jungle.
The swift growing and impenetrable vegetation blocks the paths as fast
as cut, and he who would seek the Canal Zone must follow the oldest of
highways, the sea.
[Illustration: TREE GROWING OUT OF A CHIMNEY IN JAMAICA]
If New York be the port of departure, several lines offer themselves to
the traveler, and soon after the canal is opened their number will be
increased. At present the Panama Railroad Company, owned by the
government, maintains a line of ships mainly for the carriage of
supplies and employes of the Canal Commission. There is already
discussion of the wisdom of abandoning this line after the construction
work is over, on the ground that the United States government has no
right to enter into the business of water transportation in competition
with private parties. If sold by the government, however, the line will
doubtless be maintained under private ownership. The United Fruit
Company, an American corporation with an impressive fleet of ships all
flying the British flag, also carries passengers to the Isthmus from New
York and New Orleans, as does the Hamburg-American Line, from New York
only. My own voyage was by the Royal Mail Steam Packet line, an historic
organization chartered in 1839 for the express purpose of bringing
England into closer touch with its West Indian colonies. The excellent
ships of this line, sailing fortnightly from New York, touch at the
little port of Antilla on the northern shore of Cuba, spend twenty-four
hours at Jamaica and reach Colon on the eighth day of the voyage. Thence
the ship plows along through our American Mediterranean, touching at
Trinidad, St. Kitts, Barbadoes and other British colonial outposts until
at last she turns into the open ocean, buffeting her way eastward to
Gibraltar and Southampton, her home port.
[Illustration: CANE RIVER FALLS]
A real bit of England afloat is the “Oruba” with officers clad on
festive occasions in full dress uniforms closely resembling those of the
Royal Navy, and stewards who never dropped dishes in a storm but dropped
their h’s on the slightest provocation. “’E’s in the ’old, mum,”
explained one when a lady inquired for the whereabouts of a missing dog.
It is wonderful after all how persistent are the British manners and
customs in the places the English frequent. From the breakfast tea,
bloaters and marmalade, to the fish knives sensibly served with that
course at dinner, but which finicky Americans abjure, all about the
table on these ships is typically English. In the colonies you find
drivers all turning to the left, things are done “directly” and not
“right away,” every villa has its tennis court, and Piccadilly, Bond
St., and Regent Street are never missing from the smallest colonial
towns.
But to return to the voyage. For four days we steamed south along a
course as straight as though drawn by a ruler. For three days the wind
blew bitter and cutting, the seas buffeted the weather side of the ship
with resounding blows, and the big dining saloon displayed a beggarly
array of empty seats. Betwixt us and Africa was nothing but a clear
course for wind and wave, and both seemed to suffer from speed mania.
Strange noises rose from the cabins; stewardesses looked business-like
and all-compelling as they glided along the narrow corridors. Hardened
men in the smoke room kept their spirits up by pouring spirits down, and
agreed that the first leg of a voyage to Colon was always a beastly one.
But by the morning of the fourth day a change comes over the spirit of
our dreams. The wind still blows, but it is soft, tempered to the shorn
lamb. The ship still rolls, but the mysterious organ called the stomach
has become attuned to the motion and ladies begin to reappear on the
deck. The deck chairs so blithely rented at New York are no longer
untenanted, and we cease to look upon the deck steward who took our
money as a confidence man. A glance at the chart at noon shows us off
the northern coast of Florida and the deep blue of the water betokens
the Gulf Stream. Next morning men begin to don their white suits, and
the sailors wander about barefooted. A bright girl suggests that a
voyage from New York to the tropics is like a shower bath taken
backwards, and we all are glad that the warm water faucet is at last
turned on.
[Illustration: THE ROAD TO MARKET
A typical highway of Jamaica, followed by natives going to Kingston]
The first land we sight after the Jersey coast has faded away is Watling
Island, in the Bahamas. Everybody looks at it eagerly--a long, low-lying
coast with a slender lighthouse, a fishing village and the wreck of a
square rigged vessel plainly visible--for this is believed to be the
first land sighted by Columbus. Of that there is some debate, but there
is always debate on shipboard and any event that will furnish a topic is
welcome. Everything about the ship now has turned tropical. The shady
deck becomes popular, and the 240 pound ship’s doctor in immaculate
white linen with the cutest little shell jacket after the Royal Navy
pattern becomes a subject for wonder and admiration.
Antilla, the first stopping place on the way south, is a cluster of
houses on a spacious bay on the northern side of Cuba, connected with
Santiago and Havana. Doubtless some day it may become a notable shipping
point, and indeed the shores of the bay are dotted with great sugar
houses and carpeted with fields of shimmering green cane. But today only
a lighter load of timber and a few tropical products are shipped--that
is if we except a bunch of tourists who have come this far on the way to
Colon by rail and the short sea trip from Florida to Cuba. Most of them
were in doubt whether they had improved upon the discomfort of four
rough days at sea by electing twenty-four hours of rough riding on the
Cuban railway instead.
[Illustration: SPORTS ON SHIPBOARD
THE “ORUBA”]
Past the quarantine station which, with its red-topped hospital, looks
like a seashore resort, we steam, and the boat’s prow is again turned
southward. Jamaica, our next port of call, is thirty-six hours away, and
at last we have placid blue water from which the flying fish break in
little clouds, and a breeze suggestive of the isles of spice. The ship’s
company which two days back was largely content with cots, and the
innumerable worthless remedies for seasickness, always recommended by
people who don’t get sick, now pines for exercise and entertainment.
Young men normally sane, bestride an horizontal boom and belabor each
other with pillows until one or both fall to the hospitable mattress
below. Other youths, greatly encouraged by the plaudits of fair ones,
permit themselves to be trussed up like fowls exposed for sale, and,
with ungainly hops and lurches, bunt into each other until one is
toppled to the deck. The human cockfight brings loud applause which
attains its apogee when some spectator at the critical moment with a
shrill cock-a-doodle-doo displays an egg. A ship in the tropics is the
truest of playgrounds. We are beginning to feel the content of just
living which characterizes the native of the tropics. Indeed when the
deck is cleared and waxed, and the weather cloths and colored lights
brought forth for the ball, most of the men who left New York full of
energy find themselves too languid to participate. I don’t know whether
the Royal Mail exacts of its officers an aptitude for the dance, but
their trim white uniforms were always much in evidence when the two-step
was in progress.
[Illustration: BOG WALK, JAMAICA
There are no bogs along this beautiful drive. The name was originally
“Bocas del Agua,” and has been corrupted to its present form]
Early on the second day out from Cuba a heavy gray mass showed clear on
the horizon to the southwest. It is reported by the historians that when
Queen Isabella once asked Columbus what Jamaica looked like he crumpled
up a sheet of stiff paper in his palm, then partly smoothing it
displayed it to the Queen. The illustration was apt. Nowhere does a more
crinkly island rise from the sea. Up to a height of 7000 feet and more
the mountains rise sheer from the sea with only here and there the
narrowest strip of white beach at the base. For the most part the
tropical foliage comes unthinned down to the water. In early morn the
crests of the hills are draped with clouds, and from the valleys betwixt
them masses of white mist come rolling out as the rays of the sun heat
the atmosphere. For forty miles or so you steam along this coast with
scarce an acre of level land between the mountains and the deep until in
the distance you descry the hollow in which Kingston lies embedded. A
low lying sand bar runs parallel to the shore and perhaps a mile out,
forming the barrier for the harbor which is indeed a noble bay well fit
to shelter navies. But the barrier, though but a few feet above high
water now, is sinking gradually, and the future of Kingston’s harbor is
somewhat distressing. Once this low sandbar bore the most riotous and
wicked town of history, for here stood Port Royal to which flocked the
pirates and buccaneers of the Spanish Main, with their booty--doubloons,
pieces of eight, beauteous Spanish señoritas and all the other
attractive plunder with which the dime novels of our youth made us
familiar. A right merry spot was Port Royal in those days and a pistol
bullet or a swift stab in the back, though common enough, only halted
the merriment for one man at a time. But fire purged Port Royal, and the
pleasant pursuit of piracy began to fall into disrepute. Instead of
treating the gallants who sailed under the Jolly Roger as gentlemen
adventurers, civilized governments began to hang them--England being the
last to countenance them in making Henry Morgan, wildest of the reckless
lot, a baronet, and appointed him governor of Jamaica. Now Port Royal
has shrunken to a fishing village, bordering upon the abandoned British
naval station at the very harbor’s mouth.
[Illustration: GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS, KINGSTON
The special type of reënforced concrete buildings with broad arcades is
well adapted to the tropics]
One sees there the emplacements for guns, but no guns; the barracks for
marines, but no men. Even the flagstaff rises dismally destitute of
bunting. No sign of military or naval life appears about the harbor. The
first time I visited it a small British gunboat about the size of our
“Dolphin” dropped anchor and sent four boatloads of jackies ashore for a
frolic, but on my second visit the new Governor of the colony arrived on
a Royal Mail ship, unescorted by any armed vessel, and was received
without military pomp or the thunder of cannon.
The fact of the matter is that the ties uniting Jamaica to the mother
country are of the very slenderest, and it is said that not a few
Jamaicans would welcome a change in allegiance to the United States. The
greatest product of the island is sugar. Our tariff policy denies it
entrance to our market, though as I write Congress is debating a lower
tariff. The British policy of a “free breakfast table” gives it no
advantage in the English markets over the bounty-fed sugar of Germany.
Hence the island is today in a state of commercial depression almost
mortuary. An appeal to Canada resulted in that country giving in its
tariff a 20 per cent advantage to the sugar and fruit of the British
West Indies. Thus far, however, Jamaica has refused this half a loaf,
wishing the preferential limited to her products alone.
[Illustration: KING STREET, KINGSTON, JAMAICA]
Meanwhile English writers of authority are openly discussing the
likelihood of Jamaica reverting to the United States. In its South
American supplement the London _Times_ said in 1911, speaking of the
United States: “Its supremacy in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Caribbean
Sea is today practically undisputed; there can be little doubt,
therefore, that the islands of the West Indies and the outlying units of
Spanish America will, upon the completion of the Panama Canal, gravitate
in due course to amalgamation with the Great Republic of the North.” And
Mr. Archibald Colquhoun, an authoritative writer on British West Indian
policy, said about the same time: “It is certain that Jamaica, and
other West Indian Islands, in view of the local geographical and
economic conditions--and especially in view of the change which will be
wrought in those conditions by the opening of the Panama Canal--must
sooner or later decide between Canada and the United States.”
This situation may lead the Imperial Government to throw Jamaica a sop
in the shape of heavy expenditures for fortifications, a large resident
garrison and a permanent naval station. But it is unlikely. If Kingston
is within easy striking distance of the Canal, it is within easier
striking distance of our powerful naval base at Guantanamo. The monopoly
of striking is not conferred on any one power, and the advantage of
striking first would be open to either.
Not impressive as viewed from the water, the town is even less so when
considered in the intimacy of its streets. An air of gray melancholy
pervades it all. In 1907 an earthquake rent the town into fragments, and
the work of rebuilding is but begun. Ruins confront you on every hand,
the ruins of edifices that in their prime could have been nothing but
commonplace, and in this day of their disaster have none of the dignity
which we like to discover in mute memorials of a vanished past. Over all
broods a dull, drab mantle of dust. The glorious trees, unexcelled in
variety and vigor, have their richly varying hues dulled by the dust, so
that you may not know how superb indeed is the coloring of leaf and
flower except after one of the short sharp tropical rains that washes
away the pall and sets the gutters roaring with a chocolate colored
flood.
[Illustration: JAMAICA, WHERE MOTORING IS GOOD]
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT
DUKE STREET, KINGSTON, JAMAICA
Beauty, dignity and pathos abide in the residence streets of the ancient
colonial town. Hard times for sugar planters, even more than the
earthquake, have cast a gloom over the community.]
Making due allowance for the tropical vegetation and the multitudinous
negro, there is much that is characteristically English about Kingston.
The houses of the better class of people, however fragile in
construction, stand somewhat back from the street, guarded by ponderous
brick walls in order that the theory “every Englishman’s house is his
castle” may be literally maintained. And each house has its name painted
conspicuously on its gate posts. The names are emphatically English and
their grandeur bears no apparent relation to the size of the edifice.
Sometimes they reach into literature. I saw one six-room cottage labeled
“Birnamwood,” but looked in vain about the neighborhood for Dunsinane.
[Illustration: WOMEN ON THE WAY TO MARKET
“The woman or the donkey furnishes transportation”]
The town boasts a race course, and the triple pillars of English social
life, cricket, lawn tennis and afternoon tea, are much in evidence. The
Governor is always an Englishman and his home government, which never
does things by halves, furnishes him with a stately official residence
and a salary of £5000 a year. The Episcopal Archbishop of the West
Indies resident there is an Englishman. But most of the heads of
official departments are Jamaicans, which is quite as it should be, for
out of the 850,000 people in the island only about 1660, according to
the census of 1911, were born in England, Scotland or Ireland.
Furthermore the number of “men from home” is relatively decreasing,
although their influence is still potent. Even the native Jamaican of
the more cultivated class speaks of England as home, and as a rule he
spends his holidays there. Yet the keenest observers declare that the
individual Englishman in Jamaica always remains much of a stranger to
the native people. He is not as adaptable even as the American, and it
is asserted that American influence in the island grows even as British
domination is weakened.
One home feature which the English have impressed upon the islands is
good roads. The highways leading from Kingston up into the hills and
across the island to Port Antonio and other places are models of road
making. They are of the highest economic value, too, for in marketing
farm products the one railroad is but little used. Nearly everything is
brought from farm to market on the heads of the striding women, or in
straw panniers slung over the backs of patient donkeys. Amazing are the
loads these two patient beasts of burden--biped and quadruped--bear.
Once in a while a yoke of oxen, or a one horse cart is seen, but in the
main the woman or the donkey furnishes transportation. To the Jamaican
there is nothing wrong with the verbiage of the Tenth Commandment to
which our progressive women take violent exception. To him there is
nothing anomalous in lumping in his or his neighbor’s wife with “his ox
or his ass.” So the country roads on a market day are an unending
panorama of human life, of women plodding to market--often a two days’
journey--with a long swinging stride, burden firmly poised on head, or
returning with smaller loads gossiping and laughing with much gleaming
of white teeth as the stranger passes. The roads are a paradise for
automobilists--smooth, of gentle grade, with easy curves and winding
through the most beautiful scenery of tropic hillsides and rushing
waters. Only the all-pervading dust mars the motorists’ pleasure.
[Illustration: A YARD AND ITS TENANTS
“The huts are inconceivably small, a trifle larger than billiard
tables”]
If the air is dusty, the prevailing complexion is dusky. For in this
island of about 850,000 people only about 15,000 are listed in the
census as “white,” and the whiteness of a good many of these is
admittedly tarnished by a “touch of the tarbrush.” As in every country
in which any social relation between the races is not remorselessly
tabooed--as it is in our southern states--the number of “colored” people
increases more rapidly than that of either black or white. There were in
1834, 15,000 whites out of the population of 371,000; there are today
15,605, but the blacks and mongrels have increased to more than 800,000.
The gradations in color in any street group run from the very palest
yellow to the blackest of Congo black. That is hardly the sort of
population which the United States desires to take to its bosom.
[Illustration: COALING TRANSATLANTIC STEAMSHIPS]
The Jamaica negro is a natural loafer. Of course he works when he must,
but betwixt the mild climate, the kindly fruits of the earth and the
industry of his wife or wives, that dire necessity is seldom forced upon
him. My first glimpse of industrial conditions in Jamaica was taken from
the deck of a ship warping into dock at Kingston. Another ship, lying at
the same dock, was being coaled. Down and up the 1000 feet or so of dock
tramped long files of indescribably ragged, black and dirty figures.
Those going down bore on their heads baskets piled high with coal, going
back they bore the baskets empty. Of the marching figures fully
two-thirds were women. With tattered skirts tucked up to the knees and
the merest semblance of waists, barefooted, they plodded along. The
baskets carried about 65 pounds of coal each, and for taking one from
the pile and emptying it into the ship’s bunkers these women received
half a cent. There was no merriment about the work, no singing as among
our negro roustabouts on the Mississippi. Silently with shoulders
squared, hands swinging in rhythm and basket poised firmly on the head,
the women strode along, working thus for perhaps eight or nine hours and
then flocking home chatting noisily as they darkened the streets and
forced the white-clad tourists to shrink aside from grimy contact. On
the country roads you find lines of women carrying fruit and vegetables
to market, but seldom a man. Yet thus far that weaker sex has not
developed a suffragette, although they support the colony.
There is much head work in Jamaica, even if there be little brain work.
The negroes carry everything on their heads. The only hat I saw on a
man’s kinky poll was an old derby, reversed, filled with yams and thus
borne steadily along. A negro given a letter to deliver will usually
seek a stone to weight it down, deposit it thus ballasted amidst his
wool and do the errand. In Panama an engineer told me of ordering a
group of Jamaicans to load a wheel-barrow with stones and take it to a
certain spot.
“Would you believe it,” he said, “when they had filled that
wheel-barrow, two of the niggers lifted it to their companion’s head,
balanced it and he walked off with it as contented as you please.”
The huts in which the negroes live are as a rule inconceivably small.
They are just a trifle larger than a billiard table, built of wattled
cane, and plastered over with clay. The roof is usually a thatch of
palm branches, though sometimes ragged strips of corrugated iron are
employed with much less artistic effect. In what corresponds to our
tenements, the rooming places of day laborers, the yard rather than the
house is the unit. So you will see on a tiny shack about the size of a
playhouse for children the sign, “Rooms for Rent,” which applies not to
the pigmy edifice bearing it, but to the cluster of huts set down helter
skelter in the yard. The people sleep in the huts, incidentally barring
them so far as the flimsy construction permits against any possible
entrance of fresh air. All the other activities of life are conducted in
the open--cooking, eating, sewing, gossiping. A yard is the most social
place imaginable, and the system not only contributes to health by
keeping people in the open air, adds to the gayety of life by grouping
so many black families in one corral, reduces the high cost of living as
our model tenements never can hope to, but makes one black landlord
independent, for the possession of a yard with its rooms all rented
leaves nothing needed for enjoyment except a phonograph and an ample
supply of the rum for which the island is famous.
[Illustration: MARKET WOMEN AND THEIR DONKEYS
The true industrial forces of Jamaica. Men are seldom seen as carriers
or sellers of produce]
Racially the Jamaica peasant is a negro, with varying admixtures of
white blood. The mongrel breed is steadily increasing and the pure white
population relatively decreasing. Economically the peasant is either a
day laborer or a servant, and as 40,000 are classed as servants in a
population where the employing class is limited, it follows that
employers keep many servants and the supply always exceeds the demand.
Children come rapidly to the Jamaicans. Marriage is easy and to dispense
with it easier still, so that 62 per cent of the births are
illegitimate. “My people are very religious,” said a missionary proudly,
“but, dear me, how immoral they are!”
When girls are about twelve years old the mothers, tired of supporting
them, for that task is seldom assumed by the fathers, take them to town
on the first market day. The little produce being sold, the pair proceed
from house to house seeking some “kine missus” who will take a school
girl. In the end the child becomes the property of whoever will clothe,
feed and shelter her. Pay is not expected, though when she grows helpful
she is sometimes given an occasional gift of silver. The rights of the
mistress are patriarchal, and whether or not she spoils the child the
rod is seldom spared. When she gets to be seventeen or so the girl
suddenly disappears in the night, with a bundle of her clothing. The
inevitable man has crossed her path and she has gone to be his companion
and slave.
[Illustration: ONE WAY OF CARRYING BANANAS
At the docks of the United Fruit Co., mechanical carriers, so perfected
as not to bruise the fruit, have replaced the leisurely negro]
When you think of it there is not much economic change in her situation.
She worked for her mistress for nothing--she does the same for her
husband, or more commonly for her “friend.” He may work spasmodically
for her when the need of actual money compels, but as a rule she is the
wage earner. Always she tends the little garden and takes its slender
produce to market. Sometimes she joins the coal-bearing Amazons down at
the steamship docks. Often she goes back to the family which brought her
up and offers her services anew--this time for a wage. Every house has
two or three boxes a few feet away serving for servants’ quarters, but a
girl of this type will decline these, renting instead a shack in a
“yard,” taking there daily the materials for her dinner usually provided
by her mistress. At its door, in a brazier, or a tiny stove, she will
cook the meal for the idle “husband” and the children who arrive with
mechanical regularity. After supper there is the gossip of the dozen or
more women in the yard.
The rebuilding of Kingston, compelled by the earthquake, is proceeding
apace. The town will lose much in quaintness, one can see that by the
ruins of some of the older structures in which stately colonial outlines
can be traced. But it will gain in adaptation to the climate and the
ever-present earthquake menace. The main business street--King Street,
of course, being a British colony--is lined on either side with arcaded
concrete buildings of a uniform type. Ceilings are high, windows large
and one may walk the three long blocks of the busiest business section
without emerging from the shady arcades. The government buildings,
occupying two full squares and setting well back from the street, are of
a type that suggests the streets of India, and are also of reinforced
concrete. It is the belief of the authorities that the comparative
lightness of this material coupled with its resistant powers will enable
it to survive any earthquake. The whole period of the shock of 1907
barely exceeded ten seconds, but its wreckage will not be repaired in
ten years.
[Illustration: “GWINE TO DE BIG JOB”]
The cargo that we have taken on from the spice-scented dock is
technically called a “cargo of black ivory,” made up of negroes sailing
for Colon to work on the “big job.” Good-natured, grinning negroes
these, though I have heard that, on the smaller ships that carry them by
hundreds for the 500 miles for five dollars each, they sometimes riot
and make trouble. With us they were inoffensive, though it is perhaps as
well that the passenger quarters are to windward of them. The religious
sentiment is strong upon them and as the sun goes down in the waste of
waters the wail of hymn tunes sung to the accompaniment of a fiddle and
divers mouth organs rises over the whistle of the wind and the rumble of
the machinery. One can but reflect that ten years ago, before the coming
of Col. Gorgas and his sanitation system, three out of five of these
happy, cheerful blacks would never return alive from the Canal Zone.
Today they invite no more risk than a business man in Chicago going to
his office, and when their service is ended the United States government
is obligated to return them to Jamaica where for a time their money will
make them the idols of the markets, lanes and yards.
CHAPTER II
CRISTOBAL-COLON; AND THE PANAMA RAILROAD
Colon is the most considerable town on the Caribbean Coast north and
west of Cartagena. It is in fact two towns, the older one which is still
subject to the jurisdiction of the Republic of Panama and which is
properly called Colon; and the new or American town which is in the
Canal Zone and is called Cristobal. The two are separated only by an
imaginary line, though if you want to mail a letter in Colon you must
use a Panama stamp, while if you get into trouble--civil or criminal--in
that camp of banditti you will have meted out to you the particular form
of justice which Panamanian judges keep expressly for unlucky Gringoes
who fall into their clutches. The combined towns are called
Cristobal-Colon, or in our vernacular Christopher Columbus. The name is
half French, half Spanish, and the town is a medley of all nations. For
half a century there has been trouble of various sorts about the name of
the spot--which is a sort of caldron of trouble any way. The United
States wanted to call the port Aspinwall, after the principal promoter
of the Panama Railroad which had its terminus there, but Colombia, which
at that time controlled the Isthmus, insisted on the name Colon, and
finally enforced its contention by refusing to receive at its post
office letters addressed to “Aspinwall.” This vigorous action was
effective and the United States postal authorities were obliged to
notify users of the mails that there was no longer any such place on the
world’s map as Aspinwall.
[Illustration: TORO POINT LIGHT]
The dignity of our outraged nation had to be maintained, however, and
when, a little later, the commission of our Consul at Colon expired, the
State Department refused to replace him because it ignored the existence
of such a place as Colon, while Colombia would not admit the existence
of an Aspinwall within its borders. Thus for some time a good democrat
was kept out of a job--it was the period of democratic ascendancy.
Perhaps it was pressure for this job that led our government to yield.
When the French began digging the canal they chose Limon Bay, the inlet
on which Colon stands, as its Atlantic terminus and established a town
of their own which they called Cristobal, being the French form of
Christopher. Hence Cristobal-Colon, the official name which appears on
all accurate maps of the present day.
[Illustration: TORO POINT BREAKWATER
Before its construction northers often made the harbor of Colon
untenable for ships]
[Illustration: THE NEW CRISTOBAL DOCKS]
It is one of the traditions of the town that a tramp steamer, commanded
by a German, came plowing in from the sea one morning and, passing
without attention the docks of Colon, went gaily on up Limon Bay until
she ran smack into the land. Being jeered at for his unusual method of
navigation the captain produced his charts. “That town is Colon? No? Is
it not so? Vell dere are two towns. My port is Colon. Cristobal comes
first. I pass it. I go on to Colon and by thunder dere is no Colon.
Nothing but mud.” It is recorded that the skipper’s explanation was
accepted and that he was acquitted of wilfully casting away his vessel.
[Illustration: “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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: FIRE-FIGHTING FORCE AT CRISTOBAL]
Most of the people in Colon live over their stores and other places of
business, though back from the business section are a few comfortable
looking residences, and I noticed others being built on made land, as
though the beginnings of a mild “boom” were apparent. The newer houses
are of concrete, as is the municipal building and chief public school.
The Panama Railroad owns most of the land on which the town stands, and
to which it is practically limited, and the road is said to be
encouraging the use of cement or concrete by builders--an exceedingly
wise policy, as the town has suffered from repeated fires, in one of
which, in 1911, ten blocks were swept away and 1200 people left
homeless. The Isthmian Canal Commission maintains excellent
fire-fighting forces both in Cristobal and Ancon, and when the local
fire departments proved impotent to cope with the flames both of these
forces were called into play, the Ancon engines and men being rushed by
special train over the forty-five miles of railroad. Of course the fire
was in foreign territory, but the Republic of Panama did not resent the
invasion. Since that day many of the new buildings have been of
concrete, but the prevailing type of architecture may be described as a
modified renaissance of the mining shack.
[Illustration: THE NEW WASHINGTON HOTEL]
It is idle to look for points of interest in Colon proper. There are
none. But the history of the town though running over but sixty years is
full of human interest. It did not share with Panama the life of the
Spanish domination and aggression. Columbus, Balboa and the other
navigators sailed by its site without heed, making for Porto Bello or
Nombre de Dios, the better harbors. San Lorenzo, whose ruins stand at
the mouth of the Chagres River, looked down upon busy fleets, and fell
before the assaults of Sir Henry Morgan and his buccaneers while the
coral island that now upholds Colon was tenanted only by pelicans,
alligators and serpents. The life of man touched it when in 1850 the
American railroad builders determined to make it the Atlantic terminus
of the Panama road. Since then it never has lost nor will it lose a true
international importance.
[Illustration: THE ONLY STONE CHURCH IN COLON
The ritual is of the Church of England; the congregation almost wholly
Jamaica negroes]
Manzanilla Island, on which the greater part of Colon now stands, was
originally a coral reef, on which tropical vegetation had taken root,
and died down to furnish soil for a new jungle until by the repetition
of this process through the ages a foot or two of soil raised itself
above the surface of the water and supported a swampy jungle. When the
engineers first came to locate there the beginnings of the Panama
railroad, they were compelled to make their quarters in an old sailing
ship in danger at all times of being carried out to sea by a norther. In
his “History of the Panama Railroad,” published in 1862, F. N. Otis
describes the site of the present city when first fixed thus:
[Illustration: NATURE OF COUNTRY NEAR COLON
Through this water-logged region the Panama railroad was built at heavy
cost in money and lives]
“This island cut off from the mainland by a narrow frith contained an
area of a little more than one square mile. It was a virgin swamp,
covered with a dense growth of the tortuous, water-loving mangrove, and
interlaced with huge vines and thorny shrubs defying entrance even to
the wild beasts common to the country. In the black slimy mud of its
surface alligators and other reptiles abounded, while the air was laden
with pestilential vapors and swarming with sandflies and mosquitoes.
These last proved so annoying to the laborers that unless their faces
were protected by gauze veils no work could be done even at midday.
Residence on the island was impossible. The party had their headquarters
in an old brig which brought down materials for building, tools,
provisions, etc., and was anchored in the bay.”
That was in May, 1850. In March, 1913, the author spent some time in
Colon. Excellent meals were enjoyed in a somewhat old-fashioned frame
hotel, while directly across the way the finishing touches were being
put to a new hotel, of reinforced concrete which for architectural taste
and beauty of position compares well with any seashore house in the
world. At the docks were ships of every nation; cables kept us in
communication with all civilized capitals. Not an insect of any sort was
seen, and to discover an alligator a considerable journey was necessary.
The completed Panama Railroad would carry us in three hours to the
Pacific, where the great water routes spread out again like a fan. In
half a century man had wrought this change, and with his great canal
will doubtless do more marvelous deeds in the time to come.
[Illustration: PANAMA POTTERY SELLERS]
Once construction of the road was begun shacks rose on piles amid the
swampy vegetation of the island. At certain points land was filled in
and a solid foundation made for machine shops. The settlement took a
sudden start forward in 1851 when a storm prevented two New York ships
from landing their passengers at the mouth of the Chagres River.
The delayed travelers were instead landed at Colon, and the rails having
been laid as far as Gatun, where the great locks now rise, they were
carried thither by the railroad. This route proving the more expeditious
the news quickly reached New York and the ships began making Colon their
port. As a result the town grew as fast and as unsubstantially as a
mushroom.
[Illustration: HINDOO LABORERS ON THE CANAL
At one time several hundred were employed but they are disappearing]
It was a floating population of people from every land and largely
lawless. The bard of the Isthmus has a poem too long to quote which
depicts a wayfarer at the gate of Heaven confessing to high crimes,
misdemeanors and all the sinful lusts of the flesh. At the close of the
damning confession he whispered something in the ear of the Saint, whose
brow cleared, and beaming welcome took the place of stern rejection. The
keeper of the keys according to the poet cried:
“Climb up, Oh, weary one, climb up!
Climb high! Climb higher yet
Until you reach the plush-lined seats
That only martyrs get.
Then sit you down and rest yourself
While years of bliss roll on.
Then to the angels he remarked,
‘_He’s been living in Colon!_’”
[Illustration: SAN BLAS BOATS AT EARLY DAWN]
With the completion of the Pacific railroads in the United States the
prosperity of Colon for a time waned. There was still business for the
railroad, as there has been to the present day, and as it is believed
there will be in the future despite the Canal. But the great rush was
ended. The eager men hurrying to be early at the place where gold was to
be found, and the men who had “made their pile” hastening home to spend
it, took the road across the plains. Colon settled down to a period of
lethargy for which its people were constitutionally well fitted. Once in
a while they were stirred up by reports of the projected Canal, and the
annual revolutions--President Roosevelt in a message to Congress noted
53 in 57 years--prevented life from becoming wholly monotonous. But
there was no sign of a renewal of the flush times of the gold rush until
late in the ’70’s the French engineers arrived to begin the surveys for
the Canal. By the way, that Isthmus from Darien to Nicaragua is probably
the most thoroughly surveyed bit of wild land in the world. Even on our
own Canal Zone where the general line of the Canal was early determined
each chief engineer had his own survey made, and most of the division
engineers prudently resurveyed the lines of their chiefs.
[Illustration: SAN BLAS INDIAN BOYS]
With the coming of the French, flush times began again on the Isthmus
and the golden flood poured most into Colon, as the Canal diggers made
their main base of operations there, unlike the Americans who struck at
nature’s fortifications all along the line, making their headquarters at
Culebra about the center of the Isthmus. But though the French failed to
dig the Canal they did win popularity on the Isthmus, and there are
regretful and uncomplimentary comparisons drawn in the cafés and other
meeting-places between the thrift and calculation of the Americans, and
the lavish prodigality of the French. Everything they bought was at
mining-camp prices and they adopted no such plan as the commissary
system now in vogue to save their workers from the rapacity of native
shopkeepers of all sorts.
[Illustration: SAN BLAS LUGGER PUTTING OUT TO SEA]
At Cristobal you are gravely taken to see the De Lesseps Palace, a huge
frame house with two wings, now in the last stages of decrepitude and
decay, but which you learn cost fabulous sums, was furnished and
decorated like a royal château and was the scene of bacchanalian feasts
that vied with those of the Romans in the days of Heliogabalus. At least
the native Panamanian will tell you this, and if you happen to enjoy his
reminiscences in the environment of a café you will conclude that in
starting the Canal the French consumed enough champagne to fill it.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: THE DE LESSEPS PALACE]
[Illustration: THE NATIONAL GAME--COCK-FIGHTING]
At present sightseers tarry briefly at Colon, taking the first train for
the show places along the Canal line, or for the more picturesque town
of Panama. This will probably continue to be the case when the liners
begin passing through the Canal to the Pacific. Many travelers will
doubtless leave their ships at the Atlantic side, make a hasty drive
about Colon--it really can be seen in an hour--and then go by rail to
Panama, anticipating the arrival of their ship there by seven hours and
getting some idea of the country en route. Visitors with more time to
spare will find one of the short drives that is worth while a trip to
the cemetery of Mount Hope where from the very beginning of the town
those who fell in the long battle with nature have been laid to rest.
The little white headstones multiplied fast in the gay and reckless
French days before sanitation was thought of, and when riot and
dissipation were the rule and scarcely discouraged. “Monkey Hill” was
the original name of the place, owing to the multitude of monkeys
gamboling and chattering in the foliage, but as the graves multiplied
and the monkeys vanished the rude unfitness of the name became apparent
and it gave place to “Mount Hope.” It is pitiful enough in any case; but
if you will study the dates on the headstones you will find the years
after 1905 show a rapid lessening in the number of tenants.
[Illustration: HOW THE JUNGLE WORKS
Silently but persistently the advance of nature enshrouds man’s work in
living green]
If you consider the pictures of certain streets of Colon during two
phases of their history, you will have little trouble in understanding
why the death rate in the town has been steadily decreasing. In a town
built upon a natural morass, and on which more than eleven feet of water
fell annually, there was hardly a foot of paving except the narrow
sidewalks. In the wet season, which extends over eight months of the
year, the mud in these filthy by-ways was almost waist deep. Into it was
thrown indiscriminately all the household slops, garbage and offal.
There was no sewage system; no effort at drainage. If one wished to
cross a street there was nothing for it but to walk for blocks until
reaching a floating board benevolently provided by some merchant who
hoped to thus bring custom to his doors. Along the water front between
the steamship piers and the railroad there was an effort to pave
somewhat as there was heavy freight to be handled, but even there the
pavement would sink out of sight overnight, and at no time could it be
kept in good condition. The agents of the Panama Railroad and the Royal
Mail Steam Packet Company, whose freight houses adjoined, dumped into
the seemingly bottomless abyss everything heavy and solid that could be
brought by land or water, but for a long time without avail. Under the
direction of the United States officers, however, the problem was
solved, and today the streets of Colon are as well paved as those of any
American city, vitrified brick being the material chiefly used.
[Illustration: “BOTTLE ALLEY”
A typical Colon street before the Sanitary Department concluded the work
of cleaning up]
In the days when there was no pavement there were no sewers. Today the
town is properly drained, and the sewage problem, a very serious one in
a town with no natural slope and subject to heavy rains, is efficiently
handled. There was no water supply. Drinking water was brought from the
mainland and peddled from carts, or great jars by water carriers. Today
there is an aqueduct bringing clear cool water from the distant hills.
It affords a striking commentary upon the lethargy and laziness of the
natives that for nearly half a century they should have tolerated
conditions which for filth and squalor were practically unparalleled.
The Indian in his palm-thatched hut was better housed and more
healthfully surrounded than they.
Even the French failed to correct the evil and so failing died like the
flies that swarmed about their food and their garbage indiscriminately.
Not until the Americans declared war on filth and appointed Col. W. C.
Gorgas commander-in-chief of the forces of cleanliness and health did
Colon get cleaned up.
About the base of the Toro light cluster the houses of the engineers
employed on the harbor work, and on the fortifications which are to
guard the Atlantic entrance of the canal on the west side--other
defensive works are building about a mile north of Colon. To these and
other forts in course of construction visitors are but grudgingly
admitted and the camera is wholly taboo. They are still laughing in Col.
Goethals’ office at a newly elected Congressman--not even yet sworn
in--who wrote that in visiting the Canal Zone he desired particularly to
make an exhaustive study of the fortifications, and take many pictures,
in order that he might be peculiarly fit for membership on the Military
Affairs Committee, to which he aspired.
Toro Point will, after the completion of the Canal work, remain only as
the camp for such a detachment of coast artillery as may be needed at
the forts. The village will be one of those surrendered to the jungle
from which it was wrested. Cristobal will remain a large, and I should
judge, a growing town. Colon which was created by the railroad will
still have the road and the Canal to support it.
[Illustration: D STREET, COLON, PAVED
Before being sewered and paved this street was as bad as Bottle Alley on
preceding page]
Without an architectural adornment worthy of the name, with streets of
shanties, and rows of shops in which the cheap and shoddy are the rule,
the town of Colon does have a certain fascination to the idle stroller.
That arises from the throngs of its picturesque and parti-colored people
who are always on the streets. At one point you will encounter a group
of children, among whom even the casual observer will detect Spanish,
Chinese, Indian and negro types pure, and varying amalgamations of all
playing together in the childish good fellowship which obliterates all
racial hostilities. The Chinese are the chief business people of the
town, and though they intermarry but little with the few families of the
old Spanish strain, their unions both legalized and free, with the
mulattoes or negroes are innumerable. You see on the streets many
children whose negro complexion and kinky hair combine but comically
with the almond eyes of the celestial. Luckily queues are going out of
style with the Chinese, or the hair of their half-breed offspring would
form an insurmountable problem.
Public characters throng in Colon. A town with but sixty years of
history naturally abounds in early inhabitants. It is almost as bad as
Chicago was a few years ago when citizens who had reached the
“anecdotage” would halt you at the Lake Front and pointing to that
smoke-bedimmed cradle of the city’s dreamed-of future beauty would
assure you that they could have bought it all for a pair of boots--but
didn’t have the boots. One of the figures long pointed out on the
streets of Colon was an old colored man--an “ole nigger” in the local
phrase--who had been there from the days of the alligators and the
monkeys. He worked for the Panama Railroad surveyors, the road when
completed, the French and the American Canal builders. A sense of long
and veteran public service had invested him with an air of dignity
rather out of harmony with his raiment. “John Aspinwall” they called
him, because Aspinwall was for a time the name of the most regal
significance on the island. The Poet of Panama immortalized him in verse
thus:
“Oh, a quaint old moke, is John Aspinwall,
Who lives by the Dead House gate,
And quaint are his thoughts, if thoughts at all
Ever lurk in his woolly pate,
For he’s old as the hills is this coal-black man,
Thrice doubled with age is he,
And the days when his wanderings first began
Are shrouded in mystery.”
[Illustration: BACHELOR QUARTERS AT TORO POINT]
If you keep a shrewd and watchful eye on the balconies above the cheap
john stores you will now and again catch a little glimpse reminiscent of
Pekin. For the Chinese like to hang their balconies with artistic
screens, bedeck them with palms, illuminate them with the gay lanterns
of their home. Sometimes a woman of complexion of rather accentuated
brunette will hang over the rail with a Chinese--or at least a
Chinesque--baby in the parti-colored clothing of its paternal ancestors.
Or as you stroll along the back or side streets more given over to
residences, an open door here and there gives a glimpse of an interior
crowded with household goods--and household gods which are babies. Not
precisely luring are these views. They suggest rather that the daily
efforts of Col. Gorgas to make and keep the city clean might well have
extended further behind the front doors of the house. They did to a
slight degree, of course, for there was fumigation unlimited in the
first days of the great cleaning up, and even now there is persistent
sanitary inspection. The Canal Zone authorities relinquished to the
Panama local officials the paving and sanitation work of the city, but
retained it in Colon, which serves to indicate the estimate put upon the
comparative fitness for self government of the people of the two towns.
[Illustration: A COLON WATER CARRIER]
Down by the docks, if one likes the savor of spices and the odor of tar,
you find the real society of the Seven Seas. Every variety of ship is
there, from the stately ocean liner just in from Southampton or Havre to
the schooner-rigged cayuca with its crew of San Blas Indians, down from
their forbidden country with a cargo of cocoanuts, yams and bananas. A
curious craft is the cayuca. Ranging in size from a slender canoe twelve
feet long and barely wide enough to hold a man to a considerable craft
of eight-foot beam and perhaps 35 to 40 feet on the water line, its many
varieties have one thing in common. Each is hewn out of a single log.
Shaped to the form of a boat by the universal tool, the machete, and
hollowed out partly by burning, partly by chipping, these great logs are
transformed into craft that in any hands save those of the Indians bred
to their use, would be peremptory invitations to a watery death. But the
San Blas men pole them through rapids on the Chagres that would puzzle a
guide of our North Woods, or at sea take them out in northers that keep
the liner tied to her dock. Some of these boats by the way are hollowed
from mahogany logs that on the wharf at New York or Boston would be
worth $2,000.
[Illustration: AN OPEN SEWER IN A COLON STREET]
The history of the Panama Railroad may well be briefly sketched here.
For its time it was the most audacious essay in railway building the
world had known, for be it known it was begun barely twenty years after
the first railroad had been built in the United States and before either
railroad engineers or railroad labor had a recognized place in industry.
The difficulties to be surmounted were of a sort that no men had
grappled with before. Engineers had learned how to cut down hills,
tunnel mountains and bridge rivers, but to build a road bed firm enough
to support heavy trains in a bottomless swamp; to run a line through a
jungle that seemed to grow up again before the transit could follow the
axe man; to grapple with a river that had been known to rise forty feet
in a day; to eat lunch standing thigh deep in water with friendly
alligators looking on from adjacent logs, and to do all this amid the
unceasing buzz of venomous insects whose sting, as we learned half a
century later, carried the germs of malaria and yellow fever--this was a
new draft upon engineering skill and endurance that might well stagger
the best. The demand was met. The road was built, but at a heavy cost of
life. It used to be said that a life was the price of every tie laid,
but this was a picturesque exaggeration. About 6000 men in all died
during the construction period.
[Illustration: BY A COCLÉ BROOK]
Henry Clay justified his far-sightedness by securing in 1835 the
creation of a commission to consider the practicability of a
trans-isthmian railroad. A commissioner was appointed, secured a
concession from what was then New Granada, died before getting home, and
the whole matter was forgotten for ten years. In this interim the
French, for whom from the earliest days the Isthmus had a fascination,
secured a concession but were unable to raise the money necessary for
the road’s construction. In 1849 three Americans who deserve a place in
history, William H. Aspinwall, John L. Stevens and Henry Chauncy,
secured a concession at Bogota and straightway went to work.
Difficulties beset them on every side. The swamp had no bottom and for a
time it seemed that their financial resources had a very apparent one.
But the rush for gold, though it greatly increased the cost of their
labor, made their enterprise appear more promising to the investing
public and their temporary need of funds was soon met.
[Illustration: THE MANGROVES MARCHING ON STILT-LIKE ROOTS]
But the swamp and jungle were unrelenting in their toll of human life.
Men working all day deep in slimy ooze composed of decaying tropical
vegetation, sleeping exposed to the bites of malaria-bearing insects,
speedily sickened and too often died. The company took all possible care
of its workmen, but even that was not enough. Working men of every
nationality were experimented with but none were immune. The historian
of the railroad reported that the African resisted longest, next the
coolie, then the European, and last the Chinese. The experience of the
company with the last named class of labor was tragic in the extreme.
Eight hundred were landed on the Isthmus after a voyage on which sixteen
had died. Thirty-two fell ill almost at the moment of landing and in
less than a week eighty more were prostrated. Strangers in a strange
land, unable to express their complaints or make clear their symptoms,
they were almost as much the victims of homesickness as of any other
ill. The interpreters who accompanied them declared that much of their
illness was due to their deprivation of their accustomed opium, and for
a time the authorities supplied them, with the result that nearly
two-thirds were again up and able to work. Then the exaggerated
American moral sense, which is so apt to ignore the customs of other
lands and peoples, caused the opium supply to be shut off. Perhaps the
fact that the cost of opium daily per Chinaman was 15 cents had
something to do with it. At any rate the whole body of Chinamen were
soon sick unto death and quite ready for it. They made no effort to
cling to the lives that had become hateful. Suicides were a daily
occurrence and in all forms. Some with Chinese stolidity would sit upon
a rock on the ocean’s bed and wait for the tide to submerge them. Many
used their own queues as ropes and hanged themselves. Others persuaded
or bribed their fellows to shoot them dead. Some thrust sharpened sticks
through their throats, or clutching great stones leaped into the river
maintaining their hold until death made the grasp still more rigid. Some
starved themselves and others died of mere brooding over their dismal
state. In a few weeks but 200 were left alive, and these were sent to
Jamaica where they were slowly absorbed by the native population. On the
line of the old Panama Railroad, now abandoned and submerged by the
waters of Gatun Lake, was a village called Matachin, which local
etymologists declare means “dead Chinaman,” and hold that it was the
scene of this melancholy sacrifice of oriental life.
[Illustration: Copyright, 1913, F. E. Wright.
GOING TO MARKET
Jamaica country roads are gay with women in brightly colored dresses,
carrying the products of their little farms to market. The burden is
always borne on the head with the result that peasant women have a
graceful and even stately carriage.]
The railroad builders soon found that the expense of the construction
would vastly exceed their estimates. The price of a principality went
into the Black Swamp, the road bed through which was practically floated
on a monster pontoon. It is not true, as often asserted, that engines
were sunk there to make a foundation for the road, but numbers of flat
cars were thus employed to furnish a floating foundation. The swamp
which impeded the progress of the road was about five miles south of
Gatun and was still giving trouble in 1908, when the heavier American
rolling stock was put upon the road. Soundings then made indicate that
the solid bottom under the ooze is 185 feet below the surface, and
somewhere between are the scores of dump cars and the thousands of tons
of rock and earth with which the monster has been fed. The Americans
conquered it, apparently, in 1908, by building a trestle and filling it
with cinders and other light material. But every engineer was glad when
in 1912 the relocation of the road abandoned the Black Swamp to its
original diabolical devices.
[Illustration: A PICTURESQUE INLET OF THE CARIBBEAN]
Even in so great an affair as the building of railroads, chance or good
fortune plays a considerable part. So it was the hurricane which first
drove two ships bearing the California gold seekers from the mouth of
the Chagres down to Colon that gave the railroad company just the
stimulus necessary to carry it past the lowest ebb in its fortunes.
Before that it had no income and could no longer borrow money.
Thereafter it had a certain income and its credit was at the very best.
Every additional mile finished added to its earnings, for every mile was
used since it lessened the river trip to the Pacific. In January, 1855,
the last rail was laid, and on the 28th of that month the first train
crossed from ocean to ocean. The road had then cost almost $7,000,000 or
more than $150,000 a mile, but owing to the peculiar conditions of the
time and place it had while building earned $2,125,000 or almost
one-third its cost. Its length was 47 miles, its highest point was 263
feet above sea-level, it crossed streams at 170 points--most of the
crossings being of the Chagres River. As newly located by the American
engineers a great number of these crossings are avoided.
[Illustration: CHILDISH BEAUTY WITHOUT ART]
[Illustration: A CORNER OF MOUNT HOPE CEMETERY
Names of forgotten French martyrs are carved in the stones]
Traffic for the road grew faster than the road itself and when it was
completed it was quite apparent that it was not equipped to handle the
business that awaited it. Accordingly the managers determined to charge
more than the traffic would bear--to fix such rates as would be
prohibitive until they could get the road suitably equipped. Mr. Tracy
Robinson says that a few of the lesser officials at Panama got up a sort
of burlesque rate card and sent it on to the general offices in New
York. It charged $25 for one fare across the Isthmus one way, or $10
second class. Personal baggage was charged five cents a pound, express
$1.80 a cubic foot, second class freight fifty cents a cubic foot, coal
$5 a ton,--all for a haul of forty-seven miles. To the amazement of the
Panama jokers the rates were adopted and, what was more amazing, they
remained unchanged for twenty years. During that time the company paid
dividends of 24%, with an occasional stock dividend and liberal
additions to the surplus. Its stock at one time went up to 335 and as in
its darkest days it could have been bought for a song. Those who had
bought it were more lucky than most of the prospectors who crowded its
coaches on the journey to the gold fields.
Too much prosperity brought indifference and lax management and the
finances of the road were showing a decided deterioration when the
French took up the Canal problem. One of the chief values of the
franchise granted by New Granada and afterward renewed by Colombia was
the stipulation that no canal should be built in the territory without
the consent of the railroad corporation. With this club the directors
forced the French to buy them out, and when the rights of the French
Canal company passed to the United States we acquired the railroad as
well.
[Illustration: THE SOULFUL EYES OF THE TROPICS]
It is now Uncle Sam’s first essay in the government ownership and
operation of railroads. Extremists declare that his success as a manager
is shown by the fact that he takes a passenger from the Atlantic to the
Pacific in three hours for $2.40, while the privately owned Pacific
railroads take several days and charge about $75 to accomplish the same
result. There is a fallacy in this argument somewhere, but there is none
in the assertion that by government officials the Panama Railroad is run
successfully both from the point of service and of profits. Its net
earnings for the fiscal year of 1912 were $1,762,000, of which about
five-sixths was from commercial business. But it must be remembered that
in that year the road was conducted primarily for the purpose of Canal
building--everything was subordinated to the Big Job. That brought it
abnormal revenue, and laid upon it abnormal burdens. The record shows
however that it was directed with a singular attention to detail and
phenomenal success. When passenger trains must be run so as never to
interfere with dirt trains, and when dirt trains must be so run that a
few score steam-shovels dipping up five cubic yards of broken rock at a
mouthful shall never lack for a flat car on which to dump the load, it
means some fine work for the traffic manager. The superintendent of
schools remarked to me that the question whether a passenger train
should stop at a certain station to pick up school children depended on
the convenience of certain steam-shovels and that the matter had to be
decided by Col. Goethals. Which goes to show that the Colonel’s
responsibilities are varied--but of that more anon, as the story-tellers
say.
[Illustration: MARKET DAY AT DAVID]
Within a few years forty miles of the Panama Railroad have been
relocated, the prime purpose of the change being to obviate the
necessity of crossing the Canal at any point. One of the witticisms of
the Zone is that the Panama is the only railroad that runs crosswise as
well as lengthwise. This jest is partly based on the fact that
nine-tenths of the line has been moved to a new location, but more on
the practice of picking up every night or two some thousand feet of
track in the Canal bed and moving it bodily, ties and all, some feet to
a new line. This is made necessary when the steam-shovels have dug out
all the rock and dirt that can be reached from the old line, and it is
accomplished by machines called track shifters, each of which
accomplishes the work of hundreds of men.
[Illustration: SCENE ON ALMIRANTE BAY]
The Panama Railroad is today what business men call a going concern. But
it is run with a singular indifference to private methods of railroad
management. It has a board of directors, but they do little directing.
Its shares do not figure in Wall Street, and we do not hear of it
floating loans, scaling down debts or engaging in any of the
stock-jobbing operations which in late years have resulted in railroad
presidents being lawyers rather than railroad men. The United States
government came into possession of a railroad and had to run it. Well?
The government proved equal to the emergency and perhaps its experience
will lead it to get possession of yet other railroads.
CHAPTER III
NOMBRE DE DIOS, PORTO BELLO AND SAN LORENZO
Within twenty miles, at the very most, east and west of Colon lie the
chief existing memorials of the bygone days of Spanish discovery and
colonization, and English adventurous raids and destruction, on the
Isthmus. All that is picturesque and enthralling--that is to say, all
that is stirring, bloody, and lawless--in the history of the Caribbean
shore of the Isthmus lies thus adjacent to the Atlantic entrance of the
Canal. To the east are Nombre de Dios and Porto Bello--the oldest
European settlements on the North American continent, the one being
founded about 1510, almost a century and a half before the landing at
Plymouth, and the other in 1607, the very year of the planting of
Jamestown, Virginia. To the west is the castle of San Lorenzo at the
mouth of the Chagres, the gateway to the Pacific trade, built in the
latter years of the sixteenth century and repeatedly destroyed. About
these Spanish outposts, once thriving market towns and massive
fortresses, but now vine-covered ruins where “the lion and the lizard
keep their court” clusters a wealth of historical lore.
Let us for the time turn from the Panama of today, and from speculation
as to its future, and look back upon the Panama of the past. It is a
past too full of incident, too replete with stories of battle, murder
and sudden death for full justice to be done to it in a chapter.
Volumes, libraries almost, have been written about it, for Panama is not
one of the happy countries without a history. Of that history the survey
here is necessarily the most cursory.
[Illustration: MODERN PORTO BELLO PROM ACROSS THE BAY]
Twenty miles from Colon to the east is the spacious deep water harbor of
Porto Bello, visited and named by Columbus in 1502. Earlier still it had
harbored the ships of Roderigo de Bastides who landed there in
1500--probably the first European to touch Panama soil. He sought the
strait to the Indies, and gold as well. A few miles east and north of
Porto Bello is Nombre de Dios, one of the earliest Spanish settlements
but now a mere cluster of huts amidst which the Canal workers were only
recently dredging sand for use in construction. Few visit Nombre de Dios
for purposes of curiosity and indeed it is little worth visiting, for
fires, floods and the shifting sands of the rivers have obliterated all
trace of the old town. The native village consisted of about 200 huts
when the American invasion occurred, but a spark from one of the engines
set off the dry thatch of one of the huts and a general conflagration
ensued. The Americans have since repaired the damages, to the sanitary
advantage of the place, but at heavy cost to its picturesqueness.
[Illustration: TYPICAL NATIVE HUT IN PORTO BELLO DISTRICT]
For that quality you must look to its past, for it figured largely in
the bloody life of the Isthmus in the 16th century. It was founded by
one Don Diego de Nicuesa, who had held the high office of Royal Carver
at Madrid. Tired of supervising the carving of meats for his sovereign
he sailed for the Isthmus to carve out a fortune for himself.
Hurricanes, treachery, jealousy, hostile Indians, mutinous sailors and
all the ills that jolly mariners have to face had somewhat abated his
jollity and his spirit as well when he rounded Manzanillo Point and
finding himself in a placid bay exclaimed: “_Detengamonos aqui, en
nombre de Dios_” (Let us stop here in the name of God). His crew,
superstitious and pious as Spanish sailors were in those days, though
piety seldom interfered with their profanity or piracy, seized on the
devout invocation and Nombre de Dios became the name of the port.
The town thus named became for a time the principal Spanish port on the
Caribbean coast and one of the two terminals of the royal road to Old
Panama. But the harbor was poor, the climate sickly, for the town was
shut in on the landward side by mountains which excluded the breeze. It
came to be called the Spanish Graveyard. Children died in infancy, and
Spanish mothers sent theirs to Cruces to be reared. Difficult of defense
by either land or sea it was menaced alternately by the Cimmaroons and
the English, and in 1572 Sir Francis Drake took it by assault but
gained little profit by the adventure, in which he nearly lost his life.
Warned by this, and by other attacks, a distinguished Spanish engineer
was sent to examine Nombre de Dios with other Caribbean ports.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO PORTO BELLO HARBOR, FROM SPANISH FORT]
He was impressed by Porto Bello and reported “if it might please your
Majesty it were well that the city of Nombre de Dios be brought and
builded in this harbor.” It was so graciously ordered and the “city”
having been “brought and builded” at Porto Bello its old site gradually
relapsed into wilderness save for the few huts found when the American
engineers descended upon it seeking not gold but sand. In the course of
this quest they uncovered an old Spanish galleon but did not report any
pieces of eight, ingots or doubloons. Indeed looking all over the Canal
work we may well say, never was there so much digging for so little
treasure, for even in the great Culebra cut no trace of precious metal
was found.
Nombre de Dios then affords little encouragement for the visits of
tourists, but Porto Bello, nearer Colon, is well worth a visit. The
visit however is not easily made. The trip by sea is twenty miles
steaming in the open Caribbean which is always rough, and which on this
passage seems to any save the most hardened navigators tempestuous
beyond all other oceans. There are, or rather were, no regular lines of
boats running from Colon and one desiring to visit the historic spot
must needs plead with the Canal Commission for a pass on the government
tug which makes the voyage daily. The visit is well worth the trouble
however for the ruins are among the finest on the American continent,
while the bay itself is a noble inlet. So at least Columbus thought it
when he first visited it in 1502. His son, Fernando, who afterwards
wrote of this fourth voyage of the Genoese navigator, tells of this
visit thus:
[Illustration: BULLOCK CART ON THE SAVANNA ROAD]
[Illustration: MODERN INDIAN, DARIEN REGION
Note characteristic weapons--machete, javelin and shot-gun]
“The Admiral without making any stay went on till he put into Puerto
Bello, giving it that name because it is large, well peopled and
encompassed by a well cultivated country. He entered the place on the
2nd of November (1502), passing between two small islands within which
ships may lie close to the shore and turn it out (sic) if they have
occasion. The country about the harbor, higher up, is not very rough but
tilled and full of houses, a stone’s throw or a bow shot one from the
other; and it looks like the finest landscape a man can imagine. During
seven days we continued there, on account of the rain and ill weather,
there came continually canoes from all the country about to trade, for
provisions, and bottoms of fine spun cotton which they gave for some
trifles such as points and pins.”
Time changes, and things and places change with it. What are “bottoms of
fine spun cotton” and “trifles such as points”? As for the people whose
houses then so plentifully besprinkled the landscape round about, they
have largely vanished. Slain in battle, murdered in cold blood, or
enslaved and worked to death by the barbarous Spaniards, they have given
place to a mongrel race mainly negro, and of them even there are not
enough to give to Porto Bello today the cheery, well populated air which
the younger Columbus noticed more than 400 years ago.
The real foundation date of Porto Bello is fixed at 1607, though
probably the moving thither of Nombre de Dios began earlier. Its full
name in Spanish was San Felipe de Puertovello, for the pious Spaniards
were hard put to it to name a city, a mountain, a cape or a carouse
without bringing in a saint. Typically enough San Felipe was soon
forgotten and the name became Puerto Bello or beautiful harbor. It grew
rapidly, for, as already noted, the city of Nombre de Dios was reërected
there. By 1618 there were 130 houses in the main town not counting the
suburbs, a cathedral, governor’s house, kings’ houses, a monastery,
convent of mercy and hospital, a plaza and a quay. The main city was
well-built, partly of stone or brick, but the suburbs, one of which was
set aside for free negroes, were chiefly of wattled canes with palm
thatch. A few plantations and gardens bordered on the city, but mainly
the green jungle came down to the very edge as it does with Chagres,
Cruces or other native towns today.
It was the Atlantic port of entry for not Panama alone, but for the
entire west coast of South America and for merchandise intended for the
Philippines. Its great days were of course the times of the annual fairs
which lasted from 40 to 60 days, but even at other times there were 40
vessels and numbers of flat boats occupied in the trade of the port. Yet
it was but an outpost in the jungle after all. No man alone dared tread
the royal road from the city’s gate after nightfall. In the streets
snakes, toads and the ugly iguana, which the natives devour eagerly,
were frequently to be seen. The native wild cat--called grandiloquently
a lion or a tiger--prowled in the suburbs and, besides carrying off
fowls and pigs, sometimes attacked human beings. The climate was better
than that of Nombre de Dios yet sufficiently unhealthful. Child-birth
was so often fatal and the rearing of children attended with so much
mortality that all mothers who were able resorted to Panama or Cruces at
such a time.
It was for a time a considerable market place and for the privilege of
trading there the brokers paid into the public coffer 2,000 ducats a
year. Another source of revenue was a tax of two reales on each head of
cattle slaughtered in the shambles--a tax still retained in form in the
Republic of Panama. He who brought in a negro slave had to pay two pesos
for the privilege and from this impost a revenue of some $1,000 a year
was obtained, most of which was used in cutting down the jungle and in
maintaining roads.
[Illustration: NATIVE FAMILY IN CHORRERA]
Before Porto Bello had even the beginnings of a town, before even the
settlement at Nombre de Dios had been begun, there landed at the former
port a Spaniard to whom the Isthmus gave immortality and a violent
death--two gifts of fortune which not uncommonly go hand in hand. Vasco
Nunez de Balboa was with Bastides in the visit which preceded that of
Columbus. Thereby he gained a knowledge of the coast and a taste for
seafaring adventure. Having tried to be a planter at Santo Domingo and
failed therein, he gave his creditors the slip by being carried in a
barrel aboard a ship about to explore the Panama coast under the
Bachelor Encisco. Though they laughed at him for a time as “_el hombre
de casco_”, “the man in a cask”, his new companions in time came to
accept his leadership and ultimately discarded that of Encisco, for
besides gallantry Balboa possessed a genius for intrigue. Except for his
great achievement of the discovery of the Pacific, and his genius in
making friends of the tribes he had subdued, Balboa’s career does not
differ greatly from that of the leaders of other remorseless Spanish
hordes who harried the hapless people of Central America, robbing,
enslaving and murdering them with brutal indifference to their rights
and totally callous to their sufferings. One can hardly read of the
Spaniards in Central America and Peru without sympathizing somewhat with
the Indian cacique who, having captured two of the marauders, fastened
them to the ground, propped open their jaws and poured molten gold down
their throats saying the while: “Here’s gold, Spaniards! Here’s gold.
Take a plenty; drink it down! Here’s more gold.”
[Illustration: SEVENTEENTH CENTURY RUIN AT PORTO BELLO
This edifice, still well preserved, is believed to be the Casa Real, or
Custom House]
Balboa was a pacifier as well as a fighter and it is recorded of him
that even on the warpath he was not unnecessarily brutal. Indeed one
cacique whom he overthrew was so impressed with his forbearance that he
entered into alliance with the Spaniard and gave him his favorite
daughter. Though he never married the girl Balboa “always lov’d and
cherish’d her very much”, according to Herrera, which is perhaps more
than some wives get with a wedding ceremony.
To anyone who has seen the Isthmian country as it is today, when the
stateliest native house is but a hut, and when it would appear that the
barest necessities of life are all that are sought by its people, the
story told by Herrera, the official historian of the Spanish court,
suggests a pitiful deterioration in the standard of native life. Of the
home and village of Comagre, the greatest cacique of the Darien region,
he writes:
“His palace was more remarkable and better built than any that had yet
been seen either on the Islands, or the little that was known of the
Continent, being 150 paces in length and eighty in breadth ... so
beautifully wrought that the Spaniards were amaz’d at the sight of it
and could not express the Manner and Curiosity of it. There were in it
several Chambers and Apartments and one that was like a Buttery was full
of such Provisions as the Country afforded, as Bread, Venison, Swine’s
Flesh, etc. There was another large Room like a Cellar full of earthen
Vessels, containing Several sorts of white and red Liquors made of
Indian Wheat, Roots, a kind of Palm-Tree and other Ingredients, the
which the Spaniards commended when they drank them!”
[Illustration: _Canal Commission Photo._
STREET IN MODERN PORTO BELLO]
How ingenuous the historian’s closing line! Doubtless the Spaniards
commended as lavishly as they drank. The blood they shed, the gold they
stole, the houses they burned, the women they violated and the Indians
they foully tortured and murdered form a long count in the indictment of
civilization against Spain in Central America and the West Indies. That
today the Spanish flag waves over not one foot of the territory ravaged
by Pizarro, Nicuesa, Cortez, Balboa, and Pedrarias is but the slenderest
of justice--the visitation upon the children of the sins of their
fathers. It is fair to say that of all the ruffianly spoliators Vasco
Nuñez de Balboa was the least criminal. If he fought savagely to
overthrow local caciques, he neither tortured, enslaved nor slew them
after his victory, but rather strove to make them his friends. He left
the provinces somewhat depleted of gold and pearls after his visits, but
one of the evidences of the complete lack of the cultivating grace of
civilization among the Indians was that they did not care so much for
these gewgaws as they did for their lives, the honor of their women and
their liberty. This would of course stamp them as sheer barbarians on
Fifth Avenue or the Rue de la Paix.
[Illustration: ANCIENT TRAIL FROM PORTO BELLO
Over this trail Balboa may have led his men on the march that led to the
still unknown Pacific]
As a matter of fact the Indian scorn of the Spanish greed for gold was
the cause of Balboa’s first hearing of the Pacific Ocean. He had made an
alliance with Careta, a cacique of some power, who gave his daughter to
Balboa, together with 70 slaves and about 4000 ounces of gold. As usual
the Spaniards were quarreling over the plunder, when a son of the
cacique, one Panciano, strode amongst them and, kicking the gold out of
his way, addressed them in language thus reported by the historian
Quintana:
“Christians! why quarrel and make so much turmoil about a little gold,
which nevertheless you melt down from beautifully wrought work into rude
bars? Is it for such a trifle that you banish yourselves from your
country, cross the seas, endure hardships and disturb the peaceful
nations of these lands? Cease your unseemly brawl and I will show you a
country where you may obtain your fill of gold. Six days’ march across
yonder country will bring you to an ocean sea like this near which we
dwell, where there are ships a little less in size than yours, with
sails and oars, and where the people eat out of vessels of gold and have
large cities and wealth unbounded.”
In the light of our later knowledge we know that he referred to the
Pacific and to Peru. At the conclusion of his address he volunteered to
lead the Spaniards to the unknown sea, provided they first would aid him
and his father in the overthrow of a hostile tribe, and further that
they increase their own numbers to 1000 men, for he foresaw hard
fighting.
To recuperate his force and add to it Balboa returned to his base at
Santa Maria. Here he found trouble of divers kinds. Part of his men were
mutinous. Letters from friends at Madrid told that his enemies there
were conspiring for his undoing--had even caused a new governor to be
sent out to replace him, with orders to send him home for trial. But the
most immediate danger was an Indian plot to raid and wholly obliterate
the Spanish town--an enterprise which we can hardly blame the oppressed
aborigines for cherishing.
An Indian girl, whom a cavalier had first converted to Catholicism, then
baptized and then taken for his mistress, revealed the plot to her
lover. It had been told her by her brother who, knowing of the wrath to
come, in the quaint language of Peter Martyr, “admonyshed her at the
days appoynted by sume occasion to convey herselfe oute of the way leste
shee shuld bee slayne in the confusion of bataile.” Instead of doing
this the faithless one, “forgettinge her parentes, her countrie and all
her friendes, yea and all the kinges into whose throates Vaschus had
thrust his sworde, she opened uppe the matter unto hym, and conceled
none of those things which her undiscrete broother had declared unto
her.”
[Illustration: _Canal Commission Photo_
SPANISH FORT AT ENTRANCE TO PORTO BELLO HARBOR]
Balboa was never accused of hesitation. The girl was forced to reveal
her brother’s hiding place. He was put to the torture and the
information thus extorted enabled the Spaniards to strike at once and
strike hard. With 150 men he went into the Indian territory of Darien,
surprised the natives and put them to total rout. The almost invariable
victories of the Spaniards, except when they were taken by surprise, do
not indicate superior valor on their part. To begin with they carried
fire arms which affrighted the Indians as well as slaughtered them.
Further, they wore partial armor--leather jerkins, helmets and cuirasses
of steel--so that the unhappy aborigines were not only exposed to
missiles, the nature of which they could not comprehend, but saw their
own arrows and javelins fall useless from a fairly struck target. In
one battle the Indians were even reduced to meeting their foes with
wooden swords, and, after the inevitable victory, one of the victors to
further impress the vanquished with the futility of their defensive
weapons ordered the fallen chief to stretch forth his right arm, and
with one blow struck it off.
The Indians were superstitious. Anything out of the ordinary filled them
with dread. Many refused to stand and fight because Balboa rode into
battle on a white horse. Some trained blood hounds that the Spaniards
took into battle with them also terrified them. Doing battle with them
in the open was almost like slaughtering sheep. Only in ambush were they
formidable. It may be noted in passing that not all the barbarities were
on the Spanish side. One of Balboa’s most trusted lieutenants, Valdivia,
was caught in a tempest and his ship wrecked. Those who escaped were
captured by the natives, penned up and fattened for a cannibal feast.
The day of festivity arriving Valdivia and four of his companions were
conducted to the temple and there offered up a sacrifice. Their hearts
were cut out with knives of obsidian and offered to the gods while their
bodies were roasted and devoured by the savages.
News from Madrid convinced Balboa that he was in disfavor at court. Some
great exploit was needed to reëstablish his prestige. He determined to
seek without delay that new sea of which he had been told, and to this
end gathered an army of 190 Spaniards and about 1,000 Indians. A pack of
the trained European war dogs were taken along. The old chroniclers tell
singular tales about these dogs. Because of the terror they inspired
among the Indians they were held more formidable than an equal number of
soldiers. One great red dog with a black muzzle and extraordinary
strength was endowed with the rank of a captain and drew the pay of his
rank. In battle the brutes pursued the fleeing Indians and tore their
naked bodies with their fangs. It is gravely reported that the Captain
could distinguish between a hostile and a friendly native.
[Illustration: _Photo, Prof. Otto Lutz_
A GROUP OF CHOLO INDIANS]
It is practically impossible to trace now the exact line followed by
Balboa across the Isthmus. Visitors to the Canal Zone are shown Balboa
Hill, named in honor of his achievement, from which under proper
climatic conditions one can see both oceans. But it is wholly improbable
that Balboa ever saw this hill. His route was farther to the eastward
than the Zone. We do know however that he emerged from the jungle at
some point on the Gulf of San Miguel. What or where the hill was from
which with “eagle eyes he star’d at the Pacific” we can only guess. It
was one of the elevations in the province of Quareque, and before
attaining it Balboa fought a battle with the Indians of that tribe who
vastly outnumbered his force, but were not armed to fight Spaniards.
“Even as animals are cut up in the shambles,” according to the account
of Peter Martyr, “so our men, following them, hewed them in pieces; from
one an arm, from another a leg, here a buttock, there a shoulder.” The
chief Porque and 600 of his followers were slain and as usual dead and
living were robbed of their golden jewelry.
[Illustration: NATIVES GRINDING RICE IN A MORTAR OWNED BY ALL
It never occurred to the Indians to let one man own the mortar and
charge all others for its use]
Balboa’s force of Spaniards was now reduced to 67 men; the rest were
laid up by illness, but notwithstanding the ghastly total of Indian
lives taken, no Spaniard had been slain. With these he proceeded a day’s
journey, coming to a hill whence his native guides told him the
sought-for sea might be seen. Ordering his men to stay at the base he
ascended the hill alone, forcing his way through the dense underbrush
under the glaring tropical sun of a September day. Pious chroniclers set
down that he fell on his knees and gave thanks to his Creator--an act of
devotion which coming so soon after his slaughter of the Quarequa
Indians irresistibly recalls the witticism at the expense of the Pilgrim
Fathers, that on landing they first fell upon their knees and then upon
the aborigines. Whatever his spirit, Balboa never failed in the letter
of piety. His band of cut-throats being summoned to the hilltop joined
the official priest in chanting the “Te Deum Laudamus” and “Te Dominum
confitur.” Crosses were erected buttressed with stones which captive
Indians, still dazed by the slaughter of their people, helped to heap.
The names of all the Spaniards present were recorded. In fact few
historic exploits of so early a day are so well authenticated as the
details of Balboa’s triumph.
[Illustration: _Photo T. J. Marine._
FAMILY TRAVEL ON THE PANAMA TRAIL]
Descending the hill they proceeded with their march for they were then
but half way to their goal. Once again they had to fight the jungle and
its savage denizens. Later exploring parties, even in our own day, have
found the jungle alone invincible. Steel, gunpowder and the bloodhounds
opened the way, and the march continued while the burden of gold
increased daily. It is curious to read of the complete effrontery with
which these land pirates commandeered all the gold there was in sight.
From Comagre were received 4000 ounces--“a gift”; from Panca, ten
pounds; Chiapes disgorged 500 pounds to purchase favor; from Cocura 650
pesos worth of the yellow metal and from Tumaco 640 pesos besides two
basins full of pearls of which 240 were of extraordinary size. The names
of these dead and gone Indian chiefs signify nothing today, but this
partial list of contributions shows that as a collector Balboa was as
efficient as the Wiskinkie of Tammany Hall. Not counting pearls and
girls--of both of which commodities large store was gathered up--the
spoil of the expedition exceeded 40,000 pesos in value.
It was September 29, 1513, that at last Balboa and his men reached the
Pacific. Being St. Michael’s day they named the inlet of the sea they
had attained the Gulf of St. Michael. On their first arrival they found
they had reached the sea, but not the water, for the tide which at that
point rises and falls twenty feet, was out and a mile or more of muddy
beach interspersed with boulders intervened between them and the water’s
edge. So they sat down until the tide had returned when Balboa waded in
thigh deep and claimed land and sea, all its islands and its boundaries
for the King of Spain. After having thus performed the needful
theatrical ceremonies, he returned to the practical by leading his men
to the slaughter of some neighboring Indians whose gold went to swell
the growing hoard.
The Spaniards made their way along the Pacific coast to a point that
must have been near the present site of Panama City, for it is recorded
that on a clear day they could see the Pearl Islands in the offing.
Balboa wanted mightily to raid these islands, but felt it more prudent
to hasten back to the Atlantic coast and send reports of his discovery
and tribute of his gold to the King before his enemies should wholly
undo him. So he made his way back, fighting and plundering new tribes
all the way and leaving the natives seemingly cowed, but actually full
of hatred. They had learned the folly of standing against the white
man’s arms. “Who that had any brains,” asked one chieftain touching
Balboa’s sword, “would contend against this macana which at one blow can
cleave a man in two?”
[Illustration: DESERTED NATIVE HUT
Note the profusion of pineapples growing wild, without further attention
they will thrive and multiply]
The return was made to Antigua where Balboa was received with loud
acclaim. Indeed he had accomplished the incredible. Not only had he
discovered a new ocean, not only had he brought home booty worth a
dukedom, but in the height of the rainy season he had marched 190 men
through the unknown jungle, fighting pitched battles almost every day,
taking food and drink where he could find it or going without, and
finally brought all back without losing a man. No expedition since, even
the peaceful scientific or surveying ones of our own days, has equaled
this record. He had left the Indians pacified, if resentful, and the
letter which he sent off to King Ferdinand was a modest report of a most
notable achievement. “In all his long letter,” says Peter Martyr, “there
is not a single leaf written which does not contain thanks to Almighty
God for deliverance from perils and preservation from many imminent
dangers.”
But Vasco Nunez de Balboa now approached the unhappy and undeserved
close of a glorious career. As his letter went slowly across the seas
in a clumsy galleon to Spain, one Pedrarias with a commission to govern
Balboa’s province and to deal out summary justice to Balboa, who had
been represented to the King as a treacherous villain, was on the
Atlantic making for the New World. When Ferdinand received Balboa’s
letter he would have given much to recall his hasty commission to
Pedrarias, but there was no wireless in those days, and the new
governor, with power of life and death over Balboa, was now well out at
sea.
The blow did not fall at once. On arrival at Santa Maria de la Antigua
in June, 1514, Pedrarias sent a courier to Balboa to announce his coming
and his authority. The devoted followers of Vasco Nunez were for
resisting the latter, assuring him that the King could not have received
the report of his notable discovery, else he would not thus have been
supplanted. Balboa however submitted gracefully, promising the newcomer
implicit obedience. Pedrarias, though charged to try Balboa for treason,
concealed his orders until he had gathered all the useful information
that the old chieftain could impart and won many of his followers to his
own personal support. Then he arrested Balboa and put him on trial, only
to have him triumphantly acquitted. Pedrarias was disgusted. He hated
Balboa and feared his influence in the colony. For his own part he was
tearing down the little kingdom his predecessor had erected.
[Illustration: WHAT THEY STILL CALL A ROAD IN PANAMA]
Balboa had fought the Indian tribes to their knees, then placated them,
freed them without torture and made them his allies. Pedrarias applied
the methods of the slave trader to the native population. Never was such
misery heaped upon an almost helpless foe, save when later his apt pupil
Pizarro invaded Peru. The natives were murdered, enslaved, robbed,
starved. As Bancroft says, “in addition to gold there were always women
for baptism, lust and slavery.” The whole Isthmus blazed with war, and
where Balboa had conquered without losing a man Pedrarias lost 70 in one
campaign. One of these raids was into the territory now known as the
Canal Zone. On one raid Balboa complained to the King there “was
perpetrated the greatest cruelty ever heard of in Arabian or Christian
country in any generation. And it is this. The captain and the surviving
Christians, while on this journey, took nearly 100 Indians of both
sexes, mostly women and children, fastened them with chains and
afterwards ordered them to be decapitated and scalped.”
[Illustration: OUTDOOR LIFE OF THE NATIVES
The tree is a mango so loaded with fruit that the boughs droop. The
fruit is seldom liked by others than natives]
Ill feeling rapidly increased between Pedrarias and Balboa. The former
with the jealousy and timidity of an old man continually suspected
Balboa of plotting against him. His suspicion was not allayed when royal
orders arrived from Spain creating Balboa adelantado and governor of the
newly discovered Pacific coast. The title sounded well but he would have
to fight to establish his government over the Indians and even then
Pedrarias would be his superior. But he determined to make the effort,
though with the whole Isthmus in war-paint because of the cruelties of
Pedrarias he would have to fight every inch of his way. Moreover he
tried to carry across the isthmus the hulls of four brigantines,
constructed on the Atlantic coast and designed to be put together on the
Pacific. Just why he attempted this exploit is perplexing, for there
were as good timber and better harbors for shipyards on the Pacific
side. Nearly 2000 Indian lives were sacrificed in the heart-rending task
of carrying these heavy burdens through the jungle, and when the task
was ended it was found that the timbers of two of the ships were
useless, having been honeycombed by worms. Two however were seaworthy
and with them he put forth into the Pacific, but a great school of
whales encountered near the Pearl Islands, where even today they are
frequently seen, affrighted his men who made him turn back.
In his party was a man who had fallen in love with Balboa’s beautiful
mistress, the daughter of the Indian cacique Careta. She had been
annoyed by his advances and complained to Vasco Nunez, who warned the
man to desist, accompanying the warning with remarks natural to the
situation. This man overheard a conversation, really concerning some
pitch and iron for the ships but which might be distorted to convey the
impression that Balboa was plotting the overthrow of Pedrarias. By an
unlucky chance the eavesdropper was chosen as one of a party to carry
dispatches to Pedrarias, and had no sooner reached the presence of that
bloodthirsty old conquistadore than he denounced Balboa as a traitor.
Moreover he roused the old man’s vanity by telling him that Balboa was
so infatuated with his mistress that he would never marry the governor’s
daughter--a marriage which had been arranged and announced as an affair
of state.
In a rage Pedrarias determined to put an end to Balboa. Accordingly he
wrote a pleasant letter, beseeching him to come to Santa Maria for a
conference. That Balboa came willingly is evidence enough that he had no
guilty knowledge of any plot. Before he reached his destination however
he was met by Pizarro with an armed guard who arrested him. No word of
his could change the prearranged program. He was tried but even the
servile court which convicted him recommended mercy, which the malignant
Pedrarias refused. Straightway, upon the verdict the great explorer,
with four of his men condemned with him, was marched to the scaffold in
the Plaza, where stood the block. In a neighboring hut, pulling apart
the wattled canes of which it was built that he might peer out while
himself unseen Pedrarias gloated at the sight of the blood of the man
whom he hated with the insane hatred of a base and malignant soul. There
the heads of the four were stricken off, and with the stroke died Vasco
Nunez de Balboa, the man whose name more than any other man’s deserves
to be linked with that of Columbus in the history of the Isthmus of
Panama. It was in 1517, and Balboa was but forty-two years old.
[Illustration: NATIVE HUT AND OPEN-AIR KITCHEN]
Had the bungling and cruel Pedrarias never been sent to the Isthmus that
part of the country known as the Darien might by now be as civilized as
the Chiriqui province. As it was, the thriving settlements of Acla and
Antigua languished and disappeared, and the legacy of hatred left by the
Indians of that day is so persistent that the white man has never been
able to establish himself on the eastern end of the Isthmus.
[Illustration: COCOANUT GROVE ON THE CARIBBEAN COAST]
Fate has dealt harshly with the memory of Balboa. Keats, in his best
known and most quoted sonnet, gives credit for his discovery to Cortez.
Local tradition has bestowed his name on a hill he never saw, and
Panamanian financial legislation has given his name to a coin which is
never coined--existing as a fictitious unit like our mill. He did not
himself realize the vastness of his discovery, and gave the misleading
name of the South Sea to what was the Pacific Ocean. But time is making
its amends. History will accord with the verdict of John Fiske who said
of him:
“Thus perished in the forty-second year of his age the man who, but for
that trifle of iron and pitch, would probably have been the conqueror of
Peru. It was a pity that such work should not have fallen into his
hands, for when at length it was done, it was by men far inferior to him
in character and caliber. One cannot but wish that he might have gone on
his way like Cortez, and worked out the rest of his contemplated career
in accordance with the genius that was in him. That bright attractive
figure and its sad fate can never fail to arrest the attention and
detain the steps of the historian as he passes by. Quite possibly the
romantic character of the story may have thrown something of a glamour
about the person of the victim, so that unconsciously we tend to
emphasize his merits while we touch lightly upon his faults. But after
all, this effect is no more than that which his personality wrought upon
the minds of contemporary witnesses, who were unanimous in their
expressions of esteem for Balboa, and of condemnation for the manner of
his taking off.”
[Illustration: _Ramsay, Photo_
CANAL COMMISSION STONE CRUSHER, PORTO BELLO]
And finally the United States government has acted wisely and justly
when in decreeing a great port, lined with massive docks, the stopping
place for all the argosies of trade entering or leaving the Canal at its
Pacific end, they conferred upon it the name Balboa. It will stand a
fitting monument to the great soldier and explorer whose murder affected
for the worse all Central America and Peru.
But to return to Porto Bello. Balboa’s own association with that
settlement was of the very briefest, but the influence of his discovery
was to it all important. For the discovery of the Pacific led to the
conquest of Peru under Pizarro, the founding of Old Panama and the
development at Porto Bello of the port through which all the wealth
wrung from that hapless land of the Incas found its Atlantic outlet.
[Illustration: NATIVE HUTS NEAR PORTO BELLO
The Indians of this region are fishermen and famous navigators. They
ship on vessels leaving Colon for far distant ports]
[Illustration: AN INDIAN FAMILY OF THE DARIEN]
The story of Old Panama may be reserved for a later chapter, even though
the rise and fall of both Nombre de Dios and Porto Bello were chiefly
dependent upon the chief Spanish city of the Pacific coast. For great as
was the store of gold, silver and jewels torn from the Isthmian Indians
and sent from these Spanish ports back to Spain, it was a mere rivulet
compared to the flood of gold that poured through the narrow trails
across the Isthmus after Pizarro began his ravishment of Peru. With the
conquest of the Land of the Incas, and the plunder thereof that made of
the Isthmus a mighty treasure house attracting all the vampires and
vultures of a predatory day, we have little to do here. Enough to point
out that all that was extorted from the Peruvians was sent by ship to
Panama and thence by mule carriage either across the trail to Nombre de
Dios or Porto Bello, or else by land carriage to some point on the
Chagres River, usually Venta Cruces, and thence by the river to San
Lorenzo and down the coast to Porto Bello. Nor did the mules return with
empty packs. The Peruvians bought from the bandits who robbed them, and
goods were brought from Spain to be shipped from Panama to South America
and even to the Philippines.
It seems odd to us today with “the Philippine problem” engaging
political attention, and with American merchants hoping that the canal
may stimulate a profitable Philippine trade, that three hundred years
ago Spanish merchants found profit in sending goods by galleons to Porto
Bello, by mule-pack across the Isthmus and by sailing vessel again to
Manila. Perhaps to the “efficiency experts” of whom we are hearing so
much these days, it might be worth while to add some experts in
enterprise.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood and Underwood_
RUINED SPANISH FORT AT PORTO BELLO
Now used as an American cemetery. The site is one of infinite beauty,
but the cemetery is neglected]
As this Spanish trade increased the corsairs or buccaneers sprung into
being--plain pirates, who preyed on Spanish commerce alone, finding
excuse in the fact that the Spanish were Catholics, or in the plea that
Spain had no right to monopolize American trade. The excuses were mere
subterfuges, but served in a day when piracy was winked at. The men
offering them were not animated by religious convictions, nor would they
have engaged in the American trade if permitted. For them the more
exciting and profitable pursuit of piracy, and this they pushed with
such vigor that by 1526 the merchant vessels in the trade would sail
together in one fleet guarded by men-of-war. At times these fleets
numbered as many as forty sail, all carrying guns. The system of
trade--all regulated by royal decree--was for the ships to sail for
Cartagena on the coast of Colombia, a voyage occupying usually about two
months. Arrived there, a courier was sent to Porto Bello and on to
Panama with tidings of the approach of the fleet. Other couriers spread
the tidings throughout the northern provinces of South America.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood and Underwood_
SAN BLAS LUGGERS AT ANCHOR]
The fleet would commonly stay at Cartagena a month, though local
merchants often bribed the general in command to delay it longer. For
with the arrival of the ships the town awoke to a brief and delirious
period of trading. Merchants flocked to Cartagena with indigo, tobacco
and cocoa from Venezuela, gold and emeralds from New Granada, pearls
from Margarita and products of divers sorts from the neighboring lands.
While this business was in progress, and the newly laden galleons were
creeping along the coast to Nombre de Dios and Porto Bello, word had
been sent to Lima for the plate fleet to come to Panama bearing the
tribute to the King--gold stripped from the walls of temples, pearls
pried from the eyes of sacred images, ornaments wrested from the arms
and necks of native women by a rude and ribald soldiery. With the plate
fleet came also numerous vessels taking advantage of the convoy, though
indeed there was little danger from pirates on the Pacific. The
Atlantic, being nearer European civilization, swarmed with these gentry.
[Illustration: THE TEETH OE THE TROPICS
Skeletonized jaws of a Bayano river crocodile]
At Panama all was transferred to mules and started for the Atlantic
coast. So great was the volume of treasure and of goods to be
transported that the narrow trail along which the mules proceeded in
single file, usually 100 in a caravan or train, was occupied almost from
one end to the other, and the tinkling of the mule-bells, and the cries
of the muleteers were seldom stilled. Indians sometimes raided the trail
and cut out a loaded mule or two, and the buccaneers at one time,
finding robbery by sea monotonous, landed and won rich booty by raiding
a treasure caravan. The bulkier articles of commerce were packed in
carts at Panama and sent to Venta Cruz where they were transferred to
flat boats, and taken down the river to San Lorenzo and thence to Porto
Bello by sea. When the galleons had cast anchor at that port, and the
merchants and caravans were all arrived the little town took on an air
of bustle and excitement astonishing to the visitor who had seen it in
the hours of its normal life.
[Illustration: NATIVE BRIDGE IN THE DARIEN]
[Illustration: _Copyright, 1912, National Geographic Magazine,
Washington, D. C.
Photo by Henry Pittier_
CHOCO INDIAN GIRLS
Note the toes. With them they pick up the smallest objects]
“The spectator,” says Alcedo, “who had just before been considering
Porto Bello in a poor, unpeopled state, without a ship in the port and
breathing nothing but misery and wretchedness, would remain
thunderstruck at beholding the strange alteration which takes place at
the time of this fair. Now he would see the houses crowded with people,
the square and the streets crammed with chests of gold and silver, and
the port covered with vessels; some of these having brought by the river
Chagres from Panama the effects of Peru, such as cacao, bark (quina),
vicuna wool, bezoar stone, and other productions of these provinces. He
would see others bringing provisions from Cartagena; and he would
reflect that, however detestable might be its climate, this city was the
emporium of the riches of the two worlds, and the most considerable
commercial depot that was ever known.”
The visitor to Porto Bello today may see still standing the long stone
façade of the aduana, or custom house, facing the ancient plaza. In
that square the merchants erected cane booths and tents made of sails,
while all available space was filled with bales of goods drawn thither
on sledges. With the fleet came 5000 or 6000 soldiers, who besides the
sailors needful to man the vessels, the merchants and their clerks, the
porters, the buyers of all nationalities and the native sightseers
crowded the little town of a few hundred houses so that it appeared to
be in possession of a mob.
An itinerant preacher, Thomas Gage, who has left some entertaining
reminiscences of his experiences on the Isthmus, tells quaintly of
seeking lodgings during the fair:
“When I came into the Haven I was sorry to see that as yet the Galeons
were not come from Spaine, knowing that the longer I stayed in that
place, the greater would be my charges. Yet I comforted myselfe that the
time of year was come, and that they could not long delay their coming.
My first thoughts were of taking up a lodging, which at that time were
plentifull and cheape, nay some were offered me for nothing with this
caveat, that when the Galeons did come, I must either leave them, or pay
a dear rate for them. A kind Gentleman, who was the Kings Treasurer,
falling in discourse with me, promised to help me, that I might be
cheaply lodged even when the ships came, and lodgings were at the
highest rate. He, interposing his authority, went with me to seeke one,
which at the time of the fleets being there, might continue to be mine.
It was no bigger than would containe a bed, a table, a stoole or two,
with roome enough beside to open and shut the doore, and they demanded
of me for it during the aforesaid time of the fleet, sixscore Crownes,
which commonly is a fortnight. For the Towne being little, and the
Soldiers, that come with the Galeons for their defence at least four or
five thousand; besides merchants from Peru, from Spain and many other
places to buy and sell, is causes that every roome though never so
small, be dear; and sometimes all the lodgings in the Towne are few
enough for so many people, which at that time doe meet at Portobel. I
knew a Merchant who gave a thousand Crownes for a shop of reasonable
bignesse, to sell his wares and commodities that yeer I was there, for
fifteen daies only, which the Fleet continued to be in that Haven. I
thought it much for me to give the sixscore Crownes which were demanded
of me for a room, which was but as a mouse hole, and began to be
troubled, and told the Kings Treasurer that I had been lately robbed at
sea, and was not able to give so much, and bee besides at charges for my
diet, which I feared would prove as much more. But not a farthing would
be abated of what was asked; where upon the good Treasurer, pitying me,
offered to the man of the house to pay him threescore Crownes of it, if
so be that I was able to pay the rest, which I must doe, or else lie
without in the street. Yet till the Fleet did come I would not enter
into this deare hole, but accepted of another faire lodging which was
offered me for nothing. Whilst I thus expected the Fleets coming, some
money and offerings I got for Masses, and for two Sermons which I
preached at fifteen Crownes a peece. I visited the Castles, which indeed
seemed unto me to be very strong; but what most I wondered at was to see
the requa’s of Mules which came thiether from Panama, laden with wedges
of silver; in one day I told two hundred mules laden with nothing else,
which were unladen in the publicke Market-place, so that there the
heapes of silver wedges lay like heapes of stones in the street, without
any feare or suspition of being lost. Within ten daies the fleet came,
consisting of eight Galeons and ten Merchant ships, which forced me to
run to my hole. It was a wonder then to see the multitude of people in
those streets which the weeke before had been empty.
“Then began the price of all things to rise, a fowl to be worth twelve
Rialls, which in the mainland within I had often bought for one; a pound
of beefe then was worth two Rialls, whereas I had in other places
thirteen pounds for half a Riall, and so of all other food and
provisions, which was so excessively dear, that I knew not how to live
but by fish and Tortoises, which were very many, and though somewhat
deare, yet were the cheapest meat I could eate.”
[Illustration: INDIAN HUTS NEAR PORTO BELLO]
On this annual fair, and on trade with the back country, both Nombre de
Dios and Porto Bello waxed prosperous and luxurious. Prosperity was a
dangerous quality for a town or a man to exhibit in those days when
monarchs set the example of theft and extortion, and private plunderers
were quick to follow it. So Nombre de Dios was early made the point of
an audacious raid by Sir Francis Drake. Though Drake was a bold
adventurer, he is given a measure of immortality by a statue in Baden,
the inscription on which celebrates him as the introducer of potatoes
into Europe. But personal profit, not potatoes, had his chief attention,
though as a side issue he engaged in the slave trade. July 29, 1572, he
made a descent upon Nombre de Dios with 73 men armed, according to a
writer of the time, with “6 Targets; 6 Fire Pikes; 12 Pikes; 24 Muskets
and Callivers; 16 Bowes and 6 Partizans; 2 Drums and 2 Trumpets.” His
men landed from pinnaces and after encountering “a jolly hot volley of
shot” in the plaza put the Spaniards to flight. At the point of a sword
a captive was forced to lead the raiders to the Governor’s house where
to his joy Drake discovered a stack of silver ingots worth a million
pounds sterling. But ’twas an embarrassment of riches, for the bars
were of 40 pounds weight each and therefore hard to move, so Drake
sought the King’s Treasure House where he hoped to find more movable
wealth. As the door was being broken down he fainted from loss of blood,
and as he lay speechless on the sill the Spaniards rallied and attacked
the invaders. Though Drake reviving sought to hold his men up to the
fight, they had lost their dash, and despite his protestations carried
him bodily to the boats. The men were wiser than their leader because it
was the chance arrival of some soldiers from Panama that had rallied the
populace of the town, and the English, deprived of Drake’s leadership,
would certainly have been overwhelmed. That leader however grieved
sincerely when a Spanish spy told him later that there were 360 tons of
silver in the town and many chests of gold in the treasure house.
[Illustration: COUNTRY BACK OF PORTO BELLO]
[Illustration: NATIVE WOMEN OF THE SAVANNAS BEARING BURDENS]
With his appetite whetted for treasure Drake retired to plan a more
profitable raid. This was to be nothing less than a land expedition to
cut off one of the treasure caravans just outside of old Panama on its
way down the Nombre de Dios trail. Had the Indian population been as
hostile to the English then as they became in later days this would have
been a more perilous task. But at this time the men who lurked in the
jungles, or hunted on the broad savannas had one beast of prey they
feared and hated more than the lion or the boa--the Spaniard. Whether
Indian or Cimmaroon--as the escaped slaves were called--every man out in
that tropic wilderness had some good ground for hating the Spaniards,
and so when Drake and his men came, professing themselves enemies of the
Spaniards likewise, the country folk made no war upon them but aided
them to creep down almost within sight of Panama. Halting here, at a
point which must have been well within the Canal Zone and which it
seems probable was near the spot where the Pedro Miguel locks now rise,
they sent a spy into the town who soon brought back information as to
the time when the first mule-train would come out.
All seemed easy then. Most of the travel across the isthmus was by night
to avoid the heat of the day. Drake disposed his men by the side of the
trail--two Indians or Cimmaroons to each armored Englishman. The latter
had put their shirts on outside of their breastplates so that they might
be told in the dark by the white cloth--for the ancient chroniclers
would have us believe them punctilious about their laundry work. All
were to lie silent in the jungle until the train had passed, then
closing in behind cut off all retreat to Panama--when ho! for the fat
panniers crammed with gold and precious stones!
[Illustration: CAMINA REALE, OR ROYAL ROAD NEAR PORTO BELLO]
The plan was simplicity itself and was defeated by an equally simple
mischance. The drinks of the Isthmus which, as we have seen, the
Spaniards commended mightily when they drank, were treacherous in their
workings upon the human mind--a quality which has not passed away with
the buccaneers and cimmaroons, but still persists. One of Drake’s jolly
cutthroats, being over fortified with native rum for his nocturnal
vigil, heard the tinkle of mule bells and rose to his feet. The leading
muleteer turned his animal and fled, crying to the saints to protect him
from the sheeted specter in the path. The captain in charge of the
caravan was dubious about ghosts, but, there being a number of mules
loaded with grain at hand, concluded to send them on to see if there
were anything about the ghosts which a proper prayer to the saint of the
day would exorcise. So the Englishmen again heard the tinkling mule
bells, waited this time in low breathing silence to let the rich prize
pass, then with shouts of triumph dashed from the jungle, cut down or
shot the luckless muleteers, and swarmed about the caravan eager to cut
the bags and get at the booty--and were rewarded with sundry bushels of
grain intended to feed the crowds at Nombre de Dios.
[Illustration: A LADY OF THE SAVANNA]
The disaster was irreparable. The true treasure train at the first
uproar had fled back to the walls of Panama. Nothing was left to Drake
and his men but to plod back empty handed to Cruces, where they had
left their boats. Of course they raided the town before leaving but the
season was off and the warehouses barren. Back they went to the coast
and relieved their feelings by ransacking a few coastwise towns and
hurling taunts at the governor of Cartagena. Shortly thereafter they
renewed their enterprise and did this time capture the treasure train,
getting perhaps $100,000 worth of plunder, with but little loss. Some
French pirates under Captain Tetu, who had joined in the adventure,
suffered more severely and their captain, wounded and abandoned in the
forest, was put to death by the Spaniards with certain of their favorite
methods of torture.
[Illustration: NATIVE CHILDREN, PANAMA PROVINCE]
After a time in England Drake returned to the Caribbean with a
considerable naval force, harried the coast, burned and sacked some
towns, including Nombre de Dios, and obtained heavy ransom from others.
He put into the harbor of Porto Bello, with the intent of taking it
also, but while hesitating before the formidable fortresses of the place
was struck down by death. His body, encased in lead, was sunk in the bay
near perhaps to the ancient ships which our dredges have brought to
light. The English long revered him as a great sailor and commander,
which he was, though a reckless adventurer. His most permanent influence
on the history of the Isthmus was his demonstration that Nombre de Dios
was incapable of defense, and its consequent disappearance from the map.
Such greatness as had pertained to Nombre de Dios was soon assumed by
Porto Bello, which soon grew far beyond the size attained by its
predecessor. It became indeed a substantially built town, and its
fortresses on the towering heights on either side of the beautiful bay
seemed fit to repel any invader--notwithstanding which the town was
repeatedly taken by the English. Even today the ruins of town and forts
are impressive, more so than any ruins readily accessible on the
continent, though to see them at their best you must be there when the
jungle has been newly cut away, else all is lost in a canopy of green.
Across the bay from the town, about a mile and a half, stand still the
remnants of the “Iron Castle” on a towering bluff, Castle Gloria and
Fort Geronimo. These defensive works were built of stone, cut from reefs
under the water found all along the coast. Almost as light as pumice
stone and soft and easily worked when first cut, this stone hardens on
exposure so that it will stop a ball without splitting or chipping. When
Admiral Vernon, of the British navy, had captured the town in 1739, he
tried to demolish the fort and found trouble enough. “The walls of the
lower battery,” he recorded, “consisting of 22 guns, were nine foot
thick and of a hard stone cemented with such fine mortar that it was a
long work to make any impression in it, to come to mine at all, so that
the blowing up took sixteen or eighteen days.” Even today the relics of
the Iron Fort present an air of bygone power and the rusty cannon still
lying by the embrasures bring back vividly the days of the buccaneers.
Inheriting the greatness and prosperity of Nombre de Dios, Porto Bello
inherited also its unpleasant prominence as a target for the sea rover.
French filibusters and various buccaneers raided it at their fancy,
while the black Cimmaroons of the mainland lay in wait for caravans
entering or leaving its gates. To describe, or even to enumerate, all
the raids upon the town would be wearisome to the reader. Most savage,
however, of the pests that attacked the place was Sir Henry Morgan, the
Welsh buccaneer, whose exploits are so fully and admiringly related by
Esquemeling that we may follow his narrative, both of the sack of Porto
Bello, and the later destruction of the Castle of San Lorenzo.
[Illustration: BULL-RIDER AND NATIVE CAR AT BOUQUETTE, CHIRIQUI]
It was in 1668 that Morgan made his first attack upon Porto Bello.
“Here,” wrote Esquemeling, “are the castles, almost inexpugnable, that
defend the city, being situated at the entry of the port; so that no
ship or boat can pass without permission. The garrison consists of three
hundred soldiers, and the town is constantly inhabited by four hundred
families, more or less. The merchants dwell not here, but only reside
for awhile, when the galleons come or go from Spain; by reason of the
unhealthiness of the air, occasioned by certain vapors that exhale from
the mountains. Notwithstanding their chief warehouses are at Porto
Bello, howbeit their habitations be all the year long at Panama; whence
they bring the plate upon mules at such times as the fair begins, and
when the ships, belonging to the Company of Negroes, arrive here to sell
slaves.”
Morgan’s expedition consisted of nine ships and about 460 men, nearly
all British--too small a force to venture against such a stronghold. But
the intrepid commander would listen to no opposition. His ships he
anchored near Manzanillo Island where now stands Colon. Thence by small
boats he conveyed all save a few of his men to a point near the landward
side of the town, for he feared to attack by sea because of the great
strength of the forts. Having taken the Castle of Triana he resolved to
shock and horrify the inhabitants of the town by a deed of cold-blooded
and wholesale murder, and accordingly drove all the defenders into a
single part of the castle and with a great charge of gunpowder
demolished it and them together. If horrified, the Spaniards were not
terrified, but continued bravely the defense of the works they still
held. For a time the issue of the battle looked dark for Morgan, when to
his callous and brutal mind there occurred an idea worthy of him alone.
Let us follow Esquemeling’s narrative again:
[Illustration: THE INDIANS CALL HER A WITCH]
“To this effect, therefore, he ordered ten or twelve ladders to be made,
in all possible haste, so broad that three or four men at once might
ascend them. These being finished, he commanded all the religious men
and women whom he had taken prisoners to fix them against the walls of
the castle. Thus much he had beforehand threatened the governor to
perform, in case he delivered not the castle. But his answer was: ‘I
will never surrender myself alive.’ Captain Morgan was much persuaded
that the governor would not employ his utmost forces, seeing religious
women and ecclesiastical persons exposed in the front of the soldiers to
the greatest dangers. Thus the ladders, as I have said, were put into
the hands of religious persons of both sexes; and these were forced at
the head of the companies, to raise and apply them to the walls. But
Captain Morgan was deceived in his judgment of this design. For the
governor, who acted like a brave and courageous soldier, refused not, in
performance of his duty, to use his utmost endeavors to destroy
whosoever came near the walls. The religious men and women ceased not to
cry unto him and beg of him by all the Saints of Heaven he would deliver
the castle, and hereby spare both his and their own lives. But nothing
could prevail with the obstinacy and fierceness that had possessed the
governor’s mind. Thus many of the religious men and nuns were killed
before they could fix the ladders. Which at last being done, though with
great loss of the said religious people, the pirates mounted them in
great numbers, and with no less valour; having fireballs in their hands
and earthen pots full of powder. All which things, being now at the top
of the walls, they kindled and cast in among the Spaniards.
[Illustration: A CUNA-CUNA FAMILY NEAR PORTO BELLO]
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT
A NATIVE VILLAGE
These villages are now scattered throughout the Canal Zone but will
disappear as the order expelling natives from the Zone is more
thoroughly enforced.]
“This effort of the pirates was very great, insomuch as the Spaniards
could no longer resist nor defend the castle, which was now entered.
Hereupon they all threw down their arms, and craved quarter for their
lives. Only the governor of the city would admit or crave no mercy; but
rather killed many of the pirates with his own hands, and not a few of
his own soldiers because they did not stand to their arms. And although
the pirates asked him if he would have quarter, yet he constantly
answered: ‘By no means; I had rather die as a valiant soldier, than be
hanged as a coward’. They endeavored as much as they could to take him
prisoner. But he defended himself so obstinately that they were forced
to kill him; notwithstanding all the cries and tears of his own wife and
daughter, who begged him upon their knees he would demand quarter and
save his life. When the pirates had possessed themselves of the castle,
which was about night, they enclosed therein all the prisoners they had
taken, placing the women and men by themselves, with some guards upon
them. All the wounded were put into a certain apartment by itself, to
the intent their own complaints might be the cure of their disease; for
no other was afforded them.”
[Illustration: A TRAIL NEAR PORTO BELLO]
For fifteen days the buccaneers held high carnival in Porto Bello. Drunk
most of the time, weakened with debauchery and riot, with discipline
thrown to the winds, and captains and fighting men scattered all over
the town in pursuit of women and wine, the outlaws were at the mercy of
any determined assailant. Esquemeling said, “If there could have been
found 50 determined men they could have retaken the city and killed all
the pirates. Less than fifty miles away was Panama with a heavy garrison
and a thousand or more citizens capable of bearing arms. Its governor
must have known that the success of the raid on Porto Bello would but
arouse the pirates’ lust for a sack of his richer town. But instead of
seizing the opportunity to crush them when they were sodden and
stupefied by debauchery he sent puerile messages asking to be informed
with what manner of weapons they could have overcome such strong
defenses. Morgan naturally replied with an insult and a threat to do
likewise to Panama within a twelvemonth.
[Illustration: A CHOLO MOTHER AND DAUGHTER]
“For fifteen days the revel was maintained, every citizen who looked as
if he had money being put to the torture to compel him to confess where
he had hidden it. When all had been extorted that seemed possible the
buccaneers made ready to depart. But first Morgan demanded 100,000
pieces of eight, in default of which he would burn the city and blow up
the castles. The wretched citizens sought aid of the President of Panama
who was as unwilling to help them with gold as with powder and lead. In
some miraculous way they raised it, and Morgan and his men departed,
making their way to that town of revelry, Port Royal, of which I have
already spoken, at the entrance to Kingston harbor. Perhaps it is fair
to contrast with Esquemeling’s story of the exploit Morgan’s official
report--for this worthy had a royal commission for his deeds. The
Captain reported that he had left Porto Bello in as good condition as he
found it, that its people had been well treated, so much so that
“several ladies of great quality and other prisoners who were offered
their liberty to go to the President’s camp refused, saying they were
now prisoners to a person of quality who was more tender of their honors
than they doubted to find in the President’s camp; and so voluntarily
continued with him.”
[Illustration: A GROUP OF CUEPA TREES]
Captain Morgan’s own testimony to his kindness to prisoners and his
regard for female honor impresses one as quite as novel and audacious as
his brilliant idea of forcing priests and nuns to carry the scaling
ladders with which to assault a fortress defended by devout Catholics.
Yet except for little incidents of this sort the whole crew--Spanish
conquistadores, French filibusters and British buccaneers--were very
tenacious of the forms of religion and ostentatious piety. The Spaniards
were always singing Te Deums, and naming their engines of war after the
saints; Captain Daniels, a French filibuster, shot dead a sailor for
irreverent behavior during mass; the English ships had divine service
every Sunday and profanity and gambling were sometimes prohibited in the
enlistment articles. All of which goes to show that people may be very
religious and still a pest to humanity--nor is it necessary to turn to
the buccaneers for instances of this fact.
CHAPTER IV
SAN LORENZO AND PANAMA
Two years of the joys of Port Royal emptied the pockets of the
buccaneers. The money that passed from hand to hand over the gambling
tables went thence into the pockets of the hordes of women from Spain,
France and even England who flocked to that den of thieves, and from
them into the coffers of merchants who took it back to Europe. As the
money slowly disappeared the men clamored to be led on another raid. So
great a reputation had Captain Morgan won that desperadoes from all
corners of the world flocked to Jamaica seeking enrollment in his
service. He had but to give out the tidings that he planned a new raid
to have as fine an assortment of picturesque cutthroats begging for
enlistment as ever appeared outside the pages of a dime novel.
Designating the south side of the island of Tortuga as a rendezvous, he
wrote certain gentry whom Esquemeling in a matter of fact way calls “the
ancient and expert Pirates there abiding”, asking their coöperation. By
the 24th of October, 1670, he had gathered together 37 ships fully
armed and victualled, with 2000 fighting men besides mariners and boys.
The chief ship mounted 22 great guns and six small brass cannon.
[Illustration: MOUTH OF THE CHAGRES RIVER
San Lorenzo stands on the brow of the cliff. The watch tower may be seen
faintly uplifted]
With this force Morgan first attacked the island of San Caterina,
expecting to capture there some Indian or Spaniard who would guide him
to Panama, for the sack of that city had been determined upon in
preference to either Vera Cruz or Cartagena, because it was richer. The
people of the island were in no condition to resist the overwhelming
force of the English, but the governor begged Morgan to make a sham
attack in order that his credit and that of his officers might be
maintained at home, and accordingly much powder was ineffectively
burned. It sounds like a cheap device, but it has been frequently
employed in war when resistance was obviously futile, and some deference
to uninformed home opinion was prudent.
Having secured his guides, by the easy process of putting on the rack
all the Indians captured until one was found willing to lead the raiders
through his native land, Morgan determined to move on Panama by the
Chagres River route, probably in order to take with him heavy artillery
which could scarcely be dragged through the jungle. The first step
toward the navigation of the river was the capture of Fort Lorenzo which
stood on a high bluff at its mouth. Against this famous fortress,
therefore, he sent Col. Bradley (or Brodley as he is sometimes called)
with four ships and about 400 men, while he himself remained at St.
Catherine to conceal from the Spaniards his ultimate design against
Panama.
[Illustration: MOUTH OF THE CHAGRES FROM THE FORT
The upper picture shows the sea beach on the Pacific Coast littered with
drift-wood]
The visitor to Colon should not fail, before crossing to the Pacific
side of the Isthmus, to visit the ruins of the Castle of San Lorenzo.
The trip is not an easy one, and must usually be arranged for in
advance, but the end well repays the exertion. The easiest way, when the
weather permits, is to charter a tug or motor boat and make the journey
by sea--a trip of two or three hours at most. But the Caribbean is a
tempestuous and a treacherous sea. One may wait days for weather
permitting the trip to be made in comfort, and even then may find a
stormy afternoon succeed to a calm morning. For this reason it is
essential that a seaworthy boat be procured and, if not essential, very
desirable that the company be not subject to the qualms of seasickness.
[Illustration: _Photo by T. J. Marine_
THE SALLY-PORT AT SAN LORENZO
An unusual picture because of the clearing away of the jungle.
Ordinarily the walls are hidden]
To my mind the more interesting way to visit the ruins is to take the
railroad out to Gatun, and there at the very base of the roaring
spillway, board a power boat and chug down the sluggish Chagres to the
river’s mouth where stands the ancient fort. The boats obtainable are
not of the most modern model and would stand a slender chance in speed
contests. But in one, however slow, you are lost to all appearance of
civilization five minutes after you cast off from the clay bank. At
Gatun, the canal which has been carried through the artificial lake made
by damming the Chagres River, turns sharply away from that water course
on the way to the new port of Balboa. The six or eight miles of the
tropical river which we are to traverse have been untouched by the
activities of the canal builders. The sluggish stream flows between
walls of dense green jungle, as silent as though behind their barrier
only a mile or two away there were not men by the thousands making great
flights of aquatic steps to lift the world’s ocean carriers over the
hills. Once in awhile through the silent air comes the distant boom of a
blast in Culebra, only an infrequent reminder of the presence of
civilized man and his explosive activities. Infrequent though it is,
however, it has been sufficient to frighten away the more timid
inhabitants of the waterside--the alligators, the boas and the monkeys.
Only at rare intervals are any of these seen now, though in the earlier
days of the American invasion the alligators and monkeys were plentiful.
Today the chief signs of animal life are the birds--herons, white and
blue, flying from pool to pool or posing artistically on logs or in
shallows; great cormorant ducks that fly up and down midstream,
apparently unacquainted with the terrors of the shotgun; kingfishers in
bright blue and paroquets in gaudy colors. The river is said to be full
of fish, including sharks, for the water is saline clear up to the Gatun
locks.
I know of no spot, easy of access, on the Isthmus where an idea of the
beauty and the terror of the jungle can be better gained than on the
lower Chagres. The stout green barrier comes flush to the water’s edge,
the mangroves at places wading out on their stilt-like roots into the
stream like a line of deployed skirmishers. That green wall looks light,
beautiful, ethereal even, but lay your boat alongside it and essay to
land. You will find it yielding indeed, but as impenetrable as a wall of
adamant. It will receive you as gently as the liquid amber welcomes the
fly, and hold you as inexorably in its beautiful embrace when you are
once entrapped. The tender fern, the shrinking sensitive plant, the
flowering shrub, the bending sapling, the sturdy and towering tree are
all tied together by lithe, serpentine, gnarled and unbreakable vines
which seem to spring from the ground and hang from the highest branches
as well. There are not enough inches of ground to support the vegetation
so it grows from the trees living literally on the air. Every green
thing that can bear a thorn seems to have spines and prickers to tear
the flesh, and to catch the clothing and hold the prisoner fast. Try it
and you will see why no large mammals roam in the jungle; only the
snakes and the lizards creeping down below the green tangle can attain
large size and move.
[Illustration: CHURCH AT CHAGRES
Up the steep path in the foreground the buccaneers charged upon Fort
Lorenzo]
And how beautiful it all is! The green alone would be enough, but it is
varied by the glowing orange poll of a lignum vitæ tree, the bright
scarlet of the hibiscus, the purple of some lordly tree whose name the
botanist will know but not the wayfarer. Color is in splotches on every
side, from the wild flowers close to the river’s brink to great yellow
blossoms on the tops of trees so tall that they tower over the forests
like light-houses visible for miles around. Orchids in more delicate
shades, orchids that would set Fifth Avenue agog, are here to be had for
a few blows of a machete. It is a riot and a revel of color--as gay as
the decorations of some ancient arena before the gladiatorial combats
began. For life here is a steady battle too, a struggle between man and
the jungle and woe to the man who invades the enemy’s country alone or
strays far from the trail, shadowy and indistinct as that may be.
“A man ought to be able to live quite a while lost in the jungle,” said
a distinguished magazine writer who was with me on the upper Chagres
once. We had been listening to our guide’s description of the game, and
edible fruits in the forest.
“Live about two days if he couldn’t find the trail or the river’s bank,”
was the response of the Man Who Knew. “If he lived longer he’d live
crazy. Torn by thorns, often poisoned, bitten by venomous insects,
blistered by thirst, with the chances against his finding any fruit that
was safe eating, he would probably die of the pain and of jungle madness
before starvation brought a more merciful death. The jungle is a cat
that tortures its captives; a python that embraces them in its graceful
folds and hugs them to death; a siren whose beauty lured them to
perdition. Look out for it.”
The native Indian knows it and avoids it by doing most of his traveling
by canoe. On our trip to the river’s mouth we passed many in their
slender cayucas, some tied by a vine to the bank patiently fishing,
others on their way to or from market with craft well loaded with
bananas on the way up, but light coming back, holding gay converse with
each other across the dark and sullen stream. Here and there through
breaks in the foliage we see a native house, or a cluster of huts, not
many however, for the jungle is too thick and the land too low here for
the Indians who prefer the bluffs and occasional broad savannas of the
upper waters. As we approach its outlet the river, about fifty or sixty
yards wide thus far, broadens into a considerable estuary, and rounding
a point we see before us the blue Atlantic breaking into white foam on a
bar which effectually closes the river to all save the smallest boats,
and which you may be sure the United States will never dredge away, to
open a ready water-way to the base of the Gatun locks. To the left
covering a low point, level as if artificially graded, is a beautiful
cocoanut grove, to the right, across a bay perhaps a quarter of a mile
wide is a native village of about fifty huts with an iron roofed church
in the center--beyond the village rises a steep hill densely covered
with verdure, so that it is only by the keenest searching that you can
pick out here a stone sentry tower, there the angle of a massive
wall--the ruins of the Castle of San Lorenzo.
[Illustration: OLD SPANISH MAGAZINE]
“Cloud crested San Lorenzo guards
The Chagres entrance still,
Though o’er each stone the moss hath grown
And earth his moat doth fill.
His bastions feeble with decay
Steadfastly view the sea,
And sternly wait the certain fate
The ages shall decree.”
[Illustration: SPANISH RUINS, PORTO BELLO]
We land in the cocoanut grove across the river from the ruins we have
come to see and the uninitiated among us wonder why. It appears however
that the descendants of the natives who so readily surrendered dominion
of the land to the Spaniards are made of sterner stuff than their
ancestors. Or perhaps it was because we had neither swords or
breastplates that they reversed the 16th century practice and extorted
tribute of silver from us for ferrying us across the stream in cayucas
when our own boats and boat-men would have given us a greater sense of
security. Landed in the village we were convoyed with great ceremony to
the alcalde’s hut where it was demanded that we register our names and
places of residence. Perhaps that gave us a vote in the Republic of
Panama, but we saw no political evidences about unless a small saloon,
in a hut thatched with palmetto leaves and with a mud floor and basket
work sides might be taken for a “headquarters”. Indeed the saloon and a
frame church were about the only signs of civilization about the town if
we except a bill posted in the alcalde’s office setting forth the
mysterious occult powers of a wizard and soothsayer who, among other
services to mankind, recounted a number of rich marriages which had been
made by the aid of his philters and spells.
[Illustration: OUR GUIDE AT SAN LORENZO]
We made our way from the village attended by volunteer guides in the
scantiest of clothing, across a little runway at the bottom of a ravine,
and so into the path that leads up the height crowned by the castle. It
was two hundred and fifty years ago, almost, that the little hollow ran
with a crimson fluid, and the bodies of dead Spaniards lay in the
rivulet where now the little native boys are cooling their feet. The
path is steep, rugged and narrow. Branches arch overhead and as the
trail has served as a runway for the downpour of innumerable tropical
rains the soil is largely washed away from between the stones, and the
climbing is hard.
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR AT SAN LORENZO]
“Not much fun carrying a steel helmet, a heavy leather jacket and a
twenty-pound blunderbuss up this road on a hot day, with bullets and
arrows whistling past,” remarks a heavy man in the van, and the picture
he conjures up of the Spanish assailants on that hot afternoon in 1780
seems very vivid. Although the fort, the remains of which are now
standing, is not the one which Morgan destroyed, the site, the natural
defenses and the plan of the works are identical. There was more wood in
the original fort than in that of which the remains are now
discernible--to which fact its capture was due.
[Illustration: LOOKING UP THE CHAGRES FROM SAN LORENZO]
The villagers every now and then cut away the dense underbrush which
grows in the ancient fosse and traverses and conceals effectually the
general plan of the fortress from the visitor. This cleaning up process
unveils to the eye the massive masonry, and the towering battlements as
shown by some of the illustrations here printed. But, except to the
scientific student of archaeology and of fortification, the ruins are
more picturesque as they were when I saw them, overgrown with creeping
vines and shrubs jutting out from every cornice and crevice, with the
walls so masked by the green curtain that when some sharp salient angle
boldly juts out before you, you start as you would if rounding the
corner of the Flatiron Building you should come upon a cocoanut palm
bending in the breeze. Here you come to great vaulted chambers, dungeons
lighted by but one barred casemate where on the muddy ground you see
rusty iron fetters weighing forty pounds or more to clamp about a
prisoner’s ankle or, for that matter, his neck.
The vaulted brick ceiling above is as perfect as the day Spanish
builders shaped it and the mortar betwixt the great stones forming the
walls is too hard to be picked away with a stout knife. Pushing through
the thicket which covers every open space you stumble over a dismounted
cannon, or a neat conical pile of rusty cannon balls, carefully prepared
for the shock of battle perhaps two hundred years ago and lying in
peaceful slumber ever since--a real Rip Van Winkle of a fortress it is,
with no likelihood of any rude awakening. In one spot seems to have been
a sort of central square. In the very heart of the citadel is a great
masonry tank to hold drinking water for the besieged. It was built
before the 19th century had made its entrance upon the procession of the
centuries, but the day I saw it the still water that it held reflected
the fleecy clouds in the blue sky, and no drop trickled through the
joints of the honest and ancient masonry. Back and forth through narrow
gates, in and out of vaulted chambers, down dark passages behind
twenty-foot walls you wander, with but little idea of the topography of
the place until you come to a little watch tower jutting out at one
corner of the wall. Here the land falls away sharply a hundred feet or
more to the sea and you understand why the buccaneers were forced to
attack from the landward side, though as you were scaling that toilsome
slope you wondered that any race of humans ever dared attack it at all.
[Illustration: THE TRUE NATIVE SOCIAL CENTER]
In their story of the assault on Fort Lorenzo, as indeed in the
narrative of all the doings of the buccaneers, the historians have
followed the narrative of Esquemeling, a young Dutch apothecary who
joined the sea rovers as a sort of assistant surgeon, and wrote a book
which has kept his memory alive, whatever may have been the effect of
his surgery on his patients. News of the advance of the English had
reached the Governor of Panama so that when the assailants reached the
battlefield they found the garrison reënforced until it nearly equaled
the English. So slight was the disparity in numbers that it seems
amazing that the English could have sustained the rigors of the assault.
It was, of course, impossible to attack the castle on its sea front, and
the invaders accordingly left their boats about a league from the
castle, making their way painfully through the jungle toward the place
of action. Esquemeling describes the fortification which they were to
overthrow thus:
“This castle is built upon a high mountain, at the entry of the river,
and surrounded on all sides with strong palisades, or wooden walls;
being very well terrepleined, and filled with earth; which renders them
as secure as the best walls made of stone or brick. The top of this
mountain is in a manner divided into two parts, between which lies a
ditch of the depth of thirty feet. The castle itself has but one entry,
and that by a drawbridge which passes over the ditch aforementioned. On
the land side it has four bastions, that of the sea containing only two
more. That part thereof which looks towards the South is totally
inaccessible and impossible to be climbed, through the infinite asperity
of the mountain.
“The North side is surrounded by the river, which hereabouts runs very
broad. At the foot of the said castle, or rather mountain, is seated a
strong fort, with eight great guns, which commands and impedes the entry
of the river. Not much lower are to be seen two other batteries, whereof
each hath six pieces of cannon to defend likewise the mouth of the said
river. At one side of the castle are built two great store-houses, in
which are deposited all sorts of war-like ammunition and merchandise,
which are brought hither from the inner parts of the country.
“Near these houses is a high pair of stairs, hewed out of the rock,
which serves to mount to the top of the castle. On the West side of the
said fortress lies a small port, which is not above seven or eight
fathoms deep, being very fit for small vessels and of very good
anchorage. Besides this, there lies before the castle, at the entry of
the river, a great rock, scarce to be perceived above water, unless at
low tide.”
[Illustration: _Photo, by Duperly & Son_
TROPICAL FOLIAGE ON THE CARIBBEAN]
If the English had hoped to take the garrison by surprise they were
speedily undeceived. Hardly had they emerged from the thicket into the
open space on which stands now the village of Chagres than they were
welcomed with so hot a volley of musketry and artillery from the castle
walls that many fell dead at the first fire. To assault they had to
cross a ravine, charge up a bare hillside, and pass through a ditch
thirty feet deep at the further bank of which stood the outer walls of
the fort made of timber and clay. It was two in the afternoon when the
fighting began. The assailants charged with their usual daredevil valor,
carrying fire-balls along with their swords and muskets. The Spaniards
met them with no less determination, crying out: “Come on, ye
Englishmen, enemies to God and our King; let your other companions that
are behind come too; ye shall not go to Panama this bout.”
[Illustration: ON THE UPPER CHAGRES]
[Illustration: NATIVE PANAMA WOMAN]
All the afternoon and into the night the battle raged and the assailants
might well have despaired of success except for an event which
Esquemeling thus describes:
“One of the Pirates was wounded with an arrow in his back which pierced
his body to the other side. This instantly he pulled out with great
valor at the side of his breast; then taking a little cotton that he had
about him, he wound it about the said arrow, and putting it into his
musket, he shot it back into the castle. But the cotton being kindled by
the powder occasioned two or three houses that were within the castle,
being thatched with palm leaves, to take fire, which the Spaniards
perceived not so soon as was necessary. For this fire meeting with a
parcel of powder blew it up, and hereby caused great ruin, and no less
consternation to the Spaniards, who were not able to account for this
accident, not having seen the beginning thereof.”
[Illustration: A CHARACTER OF COLON]
The fire within the fort not only disconcerted its defenders but greatly
aided the assailants, for by its flames the Spaniards could be seen
working their guns and were picked off by the English sharpshooters. The
artillery of the invaders made breaches in the walls and the debris thus
occasioned dropped into the ditch making its crossing practicable for a
storming party. Though the gallant governor of the castle threw himself
into the breach and fought with the greatest desperation, he was forced
back and into his citadel. There a musket shot pierced his brain and the
defense which was becoming a defeat became in fact a rout. Spaniards
flung themselves from the lofty cliffs upon the rocks below or into the
sea rather than trust to the mercy of their conquerors. All but thirty
of the garrison of 314 were slain, not one officer escaping, and only a
few escaped to steal up the river and through the jungle carrying to
Panama the dismal tale of the fall of its chief outpost.
Nor did the English win their triumph easily. Their force was in the
neighborhood of 400, of whom more than 100 were killed and 70 wounded. A
round shot took off both legs of Colonel Bradley and from the wound he
died a few days later. The church of the castle was turned into a
hospital, the Spaniards were made to bury their own dead, which was done
by dropping them over the cliff into the sea, and word was sent to
Morgan that the way was clear for his march upon Panama.
* * * * *
We may for a time turn aside from Buccaneer Morgan and his ravenous raid
to consider the later history of the two strongholds--Porto Bello and
San Lorenzo--which lie to the east and west of Colon. It was not the
rude shock of war which reduced them to the state of desolation and ruin
in which visitors now find them--though of such shocks they certainly
experienced enough. Morgan on his return from Panama blew up San Lorenzo
and left it a wreck, but the Spaniards rebuilt it stronger than ever
and it long continued to mount guard over the entrance to the Chagres.
So too with the forts at Porto Bello. But about 1738 one Edward Vernon,
after whom it is said Mount Vernon, the home of Washington, was named,
rose in the English parliament and declared that he could take Porto
Bello with only six ships. Parliament took him at his word, commissioned
him admiral, gave him seven ships and dispatched him on the enterprise.
Being a gentleman of spirit and a true sport, Admiral Vernon, on
approaching the Isthmus, sent one of his ships into other waters,
“disdaining to appear before Porto Bello with one ship more than he had
engaged to take it with.” Success came to him with ease. Only four of
his ships were engaged and the only considerable loss was among a
landing party which stormed the lower battery of the Iron Fort. The
Spaniards showed but little stomach for the fight, and it is worth
noting that in the recurrent affrays in the West Indies and Central
America the English whipped them with the same monotonous certainty with
which the latter had beaten the Indians. Any one desiring to draw broad
generalizations as to the comparative courage of nations is welcome to
this fact.
[Illustration: WOMAN OF THE CHAGRES REGION]
After refitting at Jamaica, Admiral Vernon, with a somewhat larger
fleet, proceeded against San Lorenzo. Again his triumph was easy, for
after a leisurely bombardment to which the Spaniards replied but
languidly, the white flag was displayed and the English entered into
possession. The warehouses in Chagres were plundered and the fort blown
up. The spluttering war between England and Spain in which these actions
occurred became known as “the war of Jenkins’ ear.” A too zealous guarda
costa lopped off the ear of a certain Captain Jenkins who, though
unknown to fame prior to that outrage, so made the welkin ring in
England, even exhibiting the mummified member from which he had been
thus rudely divorced, that Parliament was forced to declare a war in
retaliation for his ear or have its own talked off.
The buccaneers and pirates really caused the final abandonment of Porto
Bello and San Lorenzo, though not by direct attack. They made trade by
the Caribbean and along the Spanish Main so perilous that the people of
the Pacific coast found it more profitable in the long run to make the
voyage around the Horn or through the Straits of Magellan. The economics
of trade are unvarying. It seeks the cheapest before the shortest
routes, and one of the studies of our canal authorities will be to so
fix their tolls that they will not, like Morgan, L’Olonais and others,
frighten trade away from the Isthmus.
Though the forts were rebuilt to their original strength in 1751, they
never regained importance. Porto Bello disappeared when the Royal Road
to Panama lost its traffic, and the Chagres only resumed a brief
importance in 1844 when the Royal Mail Steampacket Co. made San Lorenzo
a port of call. When Colon, however, appeared as a port and the terminus
of the Panama railroad, the fate of all other ports on the Atlantic side
of the Isthmus was sealed. Left to brood over the days of their
greatness--though indeed they never repelled any serious attack--the
Iron Fort and San Lorenzo were abandoned by their Colombian garrisons
and given over to the insidious and irresistible conquest of the jungle.
Picturesque and dignified, they well repay the visit of the tourist.
+----------------------------------------+
| |
| “Still standeth San Lorenzo there, |
| Aye, faithful at his post, |
| Though scoffing trees in every breeze |
| Their prime and vigor boast; |
| His garrison is but the shades |
| Of soldiers of the past, |
| But it pleaseth him, alone and grim, |
| To watch unto the last.” |
| |
+----------------------------------------+
CHAPTER V
THE SACK OF OLD PANAMA
The week after the fall of San Lorenzo, Morgan with his full force
appeared at the mouth of the Chagres River. Before leaving St. Catherine
he had dismantled the forts and burned all the houses for no particular
reason except the seemingly instinctive desire of a buccaneer to destroy
all that he could not steal. At once he began his preparations for the
ascent of the Chagres to its head of navigation, where, disembarking, he
would take the trail for Old Panama. Cruces, which was the point of
debarkation, had grown to a considerable town at this time, being the
point of transshipment of goods destined for Nombre de Dios, or Porto
Bello, from the mules that had brought them thus far, to the boats that
would float them down to tide water. The town, an inconsiderable hamlet
of thatched huts, remained in 1913, but the rise of Gatun Lake was
expected to practically blot it out of existence.
Old Panama, for which Morgan was preparing the grim experience of a
battle and a sack, had been founded in 1519 by that Pedrarias of whom we
have told as the executioner of Balboa. It had grown rapidly, built up
by the trade resulting from the invasion of Peru. At the time of
Morgan’s raid Esquemeling writes of the city:
[Illustration: NEAR A CONVENT AT OLD PANAMA]
“There belonged to this city (which is also the head of a bishopric)
eight monasteries, whereof seven were for men and one for women; two
stately churches and one hospital. The churches and monasteries were all
richly adorned with altar-pieces and paintings, huge quantity of gold
and silver, with other precious things.... Besides which ornaments, here
were to be seen two thousand houses of magnificent and prodigious
building, being all of the greatest part inhabited by merchants of that
country, who are vastly rich. For the rest of the inhabitants of lesser
quality and tradesmen, this city contained five thousand houses more.
Here were also great numbers of stables, which served for the horses and
mules, that carry all the plate, belonging as well unto the King of
Spain as to private men, towards the coast of the North Sea. The
neighboring fields belonging to this city are all cultivated and fertile
plantations, and pleasant gardens, which afford delicious prospects unto
the inhabitants the whole year long.”
Correal fixes the number of private houses as between seven and eight
thousand. The pious Thomas Gage whom we have seen haggling for rooms at
Porto Bello visited Panama about 1538 and even then credits it with five
thousand inhabitants, and at least eight cloisters of nuns and friars.
Unfortunately the good evangelist found that “the Spaniards are in this
city much given to sinne, looseness and venery,” for which reason, or
perhaps because he “feared much the heats,” he made haste to leave the
town and left us none of those graphic descriptions of which his pen was
capable.
[Illustration: CASA REALE OR KING’S HOUSE
Its heavy walls show that it was planned for defense but the Spaniards
abandoned it]
[Illustration: _Photo by Burtis & Elliott_
THE RUINED TOWER OF SAN AUGUSTINE]
The country round about Panama was then, and still is, arable and
well-fitted for grazing. The rural population was but small, more meager
indeed than one would think would have been necessary for raising
vegetables for so considerable a town. In the back country were great
numbers of Cimmaroons, or escaped slaves who are described as living in
communities, ruled over by a black king. They went naked and were armed
with bows and arrows, spears, darts and machetes. They lived on plunder
and as when captured were they killed, or, at the best, enslaved anew,
they fought with great desperation. Merchandise trains were their chief
victims, though they often raided cattle ranches, or cut off individuals
in the outskirts of the city. The English supplied them with weapons and
could always be sure of their aid against the Spaniards, who had been
their masters and whom they hated.
The harbor was wretched, useful only for small vessels which at high
tide could come straight to the seawall, being left there by the
receding tide, high and dry, so that by quick action they could be
unloaded before the waters returned. A very considerable part of the
food of the town was fish brought thither by Indians from Taboga and
nearby islands.
Such was the town which Morgan raided. Because of the colossal disaster
which befell it, a disaster without parallel since the days when the
Goths and Vandals swept down over the pleasant plains of Italy, there
has been a tendency to magnify the size, wealth and refinement of Panama
at the time of its fall. But studied calmly, with no desire to
exaggerate the qualities which made it so rich a prize, Panama may
fairly be described as a city of about 30,000 people, with massive
churches, convents and official buildings of masonry, with many stately
houses of the type esteemed luxurious in the tropics, and peopled
largely by pure-blooded Spaniards of the better type. It was too early
a date for the amalgamation of races now so much in evidence on the
Isthmus to have proceeded far, and the ancient records show that the
Spaniards of substance in the town had mainly come thither from Seville.
Morgan started up the river from San Lorenzo, where he left 500 men to
serve as a garrison, on the 18th of January, 1761. His force comprised
1200 men in five boats with artillery and thirty-two canoes. The raiders
planned to live on the country and hence took small store of
provisions--an error which nearly wrecked the expedition. The first day
they covered about eighteen miles. This was by nature made the easiest
part of their journey, for this stretch of the Chagres is deep, with but
a slow current and much of the way they may have been aided by the
incoming tide. If the chronicler who fixed their distance covered at
eighteen miles was correct, they must have pitched their camp the first
night not very far from where Gatun Dam now rears its mighty bulk across
the valley and makes of the Chagres a broad lake. Their troubles however
came with their first nightfall. Leaving their boats and scattering
about the surrounding country they found that the Spaniards had raked it
clean of provisions of every sort. The Indian villages were either
smoking ruins or clusters of empty huts, the cattle ranches were bare of
cattle, and even the banana and yam patches were stripped. By noon on
the second day, according to Esquemeling, “they were compelled to leave
their boats and canoes by reason the river was very dry for want of
rain, and the many trees that were fallen into it.” Henceforth at that
point the Chagres River transformed into a lake will be in the
neighborhood of forty feet deep the year round. Apparently, however, the
abandonment of the boats was only partial, the main body of troops
marching through the woods while others waded, pushing the boats over
the shallows as is done today. The advance was continued in this
fashion, partly by water and partly through the jungle, all with the
greatest difficulty, at a snail’s pace and on stomachs daily growing
emptier. Twice they came upon signs that the Spaniards had prepared an
ambuscade for them, but becoming faint-hearted had fled. Thereat the
buccaneers grumbled mightily. They were better at fighting than at
chopping paths through the jungle, and were so hungry that if they had
slain a few Spaniards they would quite probably have cooked and eaten
them. For six days they struggled with the jungle without finding any
food whatsoever, then they discovered a granary stored with maize which
they ate exultingly. Leather scraps became a much prized article of
food, just as in a very different climate Greely’s men in the Arctic
circle kept alive on shreds cut from their sealskin boots. Of leather as
an article of diet Esquemeling writes:
[Illustration: WAYSIDE SHRINE ON THE SAVANNA ROAD]
“Here again he was happy, that had reserved since noon any small piece
of leather whereof to make his supper, drinking after it a good draught
of water for his greatest comfort. Some persons, who never were out of
their mothers’ kitchens, may ask how these pirates could eat, swallow
and digest those pieces of leather, so hard and dry. To whom I only
answer: That could they once experiment what hunger, or rather famine,
is, they would certainly find the manner, by their own necessity, as the
pirates did. For these first took the leather and sliced it in pieces.
Then did they beat it between two stones, and rub it, often dipping it
in the water of the river to render it by these means supple and tender.
Lastly they scraped off the hair, and roasted or broiled it upon the
fire. And, being thus cooked, they cut it into small morsels, and eat
it, helping it down with frequent gulps of water, which by good fortune
they had near at hand.”
Once only did they meet with any resistance; that was near Cruces where
several hundred Indians ambushed them in the jungle, and while avoiding
any direct combat, killed several with arrows. As the Indians fled they
cried out in Spanish, “Ho, ye dogs! Go to the savanna; to the savanna,”
from which, as from like warnings uttered by stragglers, the invaders
concluded that battle was to be given them on the broad plain before the
city.
It had taken six days for the expedition to reach Cruces--a trip which
could readily be made today by train to Gamboa and thence by cayuca in
five or six hours. Arrived there they prepared for the last stage of the
journey, for there they finally left their boats and took up the Royal
Road. Cruces is eight miles from Panama, and at the moment of Morgan’s
descent upon it, was at the period of its greatest prosperity. Of its
rise to greatness and its final disappearance under the rising waters of
Gatun Lake I shall have more to say in the chapter concerning the
Chagres River. The English found the frame houses already ablaze, and
the larders swept clean, the Spaniards having followed their invariable
custom of leaving no food for the invaders. Some wretched dogs and cats
which hung about the deserted dwellings were killed and eaten, and in
the storehouses a number of jars of wine were found, upon drinking which
the buccaneers became deathly sick. They claimed it was poisoned, but
more probably their stomachs, which had been struggling to digest
leather scraps, were in no condition for the strong wines of the
tropics.
From this point onward the invaders saw many of their enemies, but the
Indians only offered active resistance, firing upon the advancing column
from ambuscades, and at one or two made a determined stand. As the
invaders were strung out in single file along a narrow road (Esquemeling
complains that only ten or twelve men could walk in a file) it would
have been easy to so impede their progress, and harass them with attacks
from the bush, as to defeat their purpose wholly. For it is to be
remembered that the English were almost starved, footsore and weary,
dragging cannon along the rocky roads and bearing heavy equipment under
the scorching sun. But the Spaniards contented themselves with shouting
defiance and daring the invaders to meet them “a la savanna.” At the
first danger of a fight they ran away.
Gaining on the ninth day of their march the top of a hill, still known
as “El Cerro de los Buccaneeros” (The Hill of the Buccaneers), the
pirates had the joy of seeing for the first time the Pacific, and thus
knowing that Panama must be at hand. Upon the plain below they came upon
a great body of cattle. Some historians say that the Spaniards had
gathered a great herd of savage bulls to be driven upon the English
lines in expectation of putting them to rout. The tradition seems
doubtful, and to any one who has seen the mild and docile bulls of the
Panama savannas it is merely ridiculous. However the cattle came there
it was an ill chance for the Spaniards, for they furnished the hearty
food necessary to put fight again into the famished bodies of the
buccaneers. Esquemeling’s description of the banquet on the plains is
hardly appetizing:
[Illustration: ARCHED BRIDGE AT OLD PANAMA, ALMOST 400 YEARS OLD
There was no Horatius to hold this strait path against the invaders]
“Here while some were employed in killing and flaying cows, horses,
bulls and chiefly asses, of which there was greatest number, others
busied themselves in kindling of fires and getting wood wherewith to
roast them. Thus cutting the flesh of these animals into pieces, or
gobbets, they threw them into the fire, and half carbonadoed or roasted,
they devoured them with incredible haste and appetite. For such was
their hunger that they more resembled cannibals than Europeans at this
banquet, the blood many times running down from their beards to the
middle of their bodies.”
Gorged to their gullets, the cutthroats lay down to rest. Morgan had a
sharp watch kept, and sounded at least one false alarm that the men
might not sleep too securely. But the Spaniards on the eve of their
crushing disaster left their foes to rest in peace except for a noisy
cannonade which did no damage, and shouts of “Corros! Nos
Veremos”--“Dogs! We will see you again,” which they certainly did,
finding the meeting most unpleasant.
On the morrow, the tenth day after leaving San Lorenzo, and either the
18th or 27th of January, 1671, for contemporary writers differ about the
date, the attack on the city began. The buccaneers disappointed the
Spanish at the very outset by not taking the road which lay plain and
open to them and which was well commanded by the Spanish batteries and
ambuscades, but came upon them through the woods. This violation of the
rules of the game embarrassed the Spaniards from the very first.
[Illustration: _Photo by Prof. Otto Lutz_
FOLIAGE ON THE CANAL ZONE]
But even so, they had every advantage on their side--except courage.
They largely outnumbered the assailants, though the estimate of the
hostile generals differ greatly, as they always have in history. We must
reasonably suppose that in a battle on the issue of which directly
depended their lives, the lives and honor of their womenfolk, their
homes, their fortunes, their liberty and the continued existence of
their city the people of Panama would have turned out to a man. Yet the
President of Panama reported to the Spanish court that he had but 1200
men, mostly negroes, mulattoes and Indians, armed with fowling pieces
and his only artillery three wooden cannon bound with rawhide. Dr. C. L.
G. Anderson, to whose painstaking study of the old Spanish chroniclers
all present-day students of Panama history must be largely indebted,
says, and reasonably, “The Spanish army was made up not merely of
merchants, planters and servants, but contained besides many regular
troops; veterans of the wars in Flanders, Sicily and other countries of
Europe.” Whatever the precise figures may have been there is no question
that the assailants were largely outnumbered by the defenders who,
fighting for wives, and children, homes and firesides, might have been
expected to show desperate valor. Instead of which the buccaneers put
the Spaniards to rout in two hours’ fighting on the plain to which the
pirates had been so scornfully invited.
[Illustration: THE CHAGRES ABOVE SAN LORENZO]
The Spanish plan of battle savored largely of the theatrical. As the
circus opens its performance with a grand entry of mounted performers,
so the Spaniards ushered in the fight with a grand charge of cavalry.
Admirable cavalrymen, they are said to have been, well mounted on
trained cattle ponies and in all about 400 strong. Unhappily there
appeared to have been no preliminary study of the English position, and
a morass impenetrable by horsemen guarded its flanks. Only in front
could the English line be reached and there the trained marksmen of the
buccaneers, or cattle hunters, dropping on one knee, picked off the
Spanish horsemen before they could close. The cavalry hardly reached the
buccaneers’ first line though they charged twice with the utmost
gallantry. An infantry charge that followed was beaten back with like
slaughter. Seeing this the Spaniards are said to have resorted to a
device as ridiculous in its outcome as it was in its conception. This
was the driving against the buccaneers’ lines of a herd of a thousand
bulls driven by fifty vaqueros. With great shouting and cracking of
whips the herd was urged against the invaders. But the Central American
bull as a ferocious beast is a disappointment--which perhaps explains
the placidity with which Panama agreed to the request of the United
States that it abolish bull fighting. If not vicious, however, they can
be obstinate, and about as many bulls charged into the already shattered
Spanish lines as upon the buccaneers. Morgan showed quick wit by
ordering his men to let the bulls pass, but kill the vaqueros, and so,
with the exception of a few bovines who lingered to rend the British
flags, being enraged by their scarlet hue, the greater part of the herd
trotted off to a quieter part of the savanna where they might placidly
graze while the foolish men who had sought to drag them into the quarrel
went on killing each other. This virtually ended the Spanish defense.
After another charge the defenders of the city gave up any effort at
organized opposition to the invaders and fled into the city, or to the
shelter of the neighboring jungle. The English, exhausted with their
long march and the shock of the battle, did not immediately follow up
their advantage but rested for some hours. There is much conflict of
authority on the question of loss in the battle. Morgan claimed to have
lost only five men killed and ten wounded, and fixed the Spanish loss at
about 400. Esquemeling says there were 600 Spaniards dead upon the
field beside the wounded and prisoners. Whatever the comparative losses
the Spanish defeat was decisive, nor did the survivors regain sufficient
morale to offer any effective opposition to the buccaneers as they moved
upon the city.
[Illustration: IN THE CRYPT OF OLD SAN AUGUSTINE]
[Illustration: A WOMAN OF OLD PANAMA]
One would think that the final defense would have been dogged and
desperate in the extreme. The Spaniards knew what to expect in the way
of murder, rapine, plunder and enslavement. They had the story of Porto
Bello fresh in their memories, and, for that matter, they had enjoyed
such fruits of victory themselves too often to hug the delusion that
these victors would forego them. Nor even after the decisive thrashing
they had sustained on the plain need they have despaired. On three sides
Panama was defended by the sea and its inlets, and on the fourth could
only be approached along a single road and over an arched bridge, the
sturdy masonry of which still stands, and forms a favorite background
for photographic groups of tourists. Though not walled, as was its
successor, Old Panama had a great plenty of heavy masonry buildings, the
ruins of which show them to have been constructed with a view to
defense. The churches, the eight convents, the official buildings and
many of the private residences were built of stone with heavy barred
windows and, if stoutly defended in conjunction with barricades in the
streets, might well have balked the invaders of their prey. But the
Spanish spirit seemed crushed by the defeat of their choice cavalry on
the savanna, and three hours sufficed for the English to make themselves
masters of the whole city. During the fighting flames broke out in
several quarters of the town, some think set purposely by the
assailants, which was denied by Morgan. However caused, the fires raged
for days, were still smoldering when the buccaneers left three weeks
later, and consumed nearly all except the masonry edifices in the city.
Imagination balks at the effort to conceive the wretched plight of the
30,000 people of this city, subjected for three weeks to the cruelty,
cupidity and lust of the “experienced and ancient pyrates” and the
cutthroats of all nationalities that made up the command of Morgan.
Little more than a thousand of the raiders could have remained alive,
but all the fighting men of the city were slain, wounded or cowed into
unmanly subjection. After the first riotous orgy of drunkenness and
rapine--though indeed Morgan shrewdly strove to keep his men sober by
spreading the report that all the wine had been poisoned--the business
of looting was taken up seriously. First the churches and government
houses had to be ransacked for precious ornaments and treasure, and
herein the robbers met with their first serious disappointment, for on
the news of their coming much of the plate had been put on ships and
sent out to sea. A brig aground in the harbor was seized by Morgan and
sent in pursuit, but the delights of the Island of Taboga, then as now a
pleasure resort, proved superior even to the avariciousness of the
Spaniards, and they lingered there over wine cups until the treasure
ships had vanished. Rumors still linger that much of the treasure had
been buried at Taboga, and that one richly freighted ship had been sunk
some place nearby. But frequent treasure-hunting expeditions have come
home empty handed.
[Illustration: WASH DAY AT TABOGA]
After raking the government buildings from garret to vaults the pirates
turned to the private houses. From ceremonial plate to the seamstress’s
thimble; from the glittering necklace to the wedding ring, everything
was raked together into the great common store of plunder. What was
easily found was not enough. Wells were searched, floors torn up, walls
ripped open and, after all other devices had been employed, prisoners
were put to the torture to make them reveal the hiding places of their
own and others’ valuables. Capt. Morgan led in this activity, as indeed
he appears to have been the most villainous of all his crew in the
mistreatment of women. After all that could be gathered by these devices
had been taken the several thousand prisoners were informed that if they
wanted to retain their lives and regain their liberty they must pay
ransom, fixed in amount according to the standing in the community and
the wealth of the captive. Of course the community was gone and the
buccaneers had taken all of the wealth, but the luckless prisoner was
expected to pay nevertheless and a surprising number of them did so.
With all these expedients for the extraction of wealth from a subjugated
town, the buccaneers were fain to be satisfied, and, weak from wounds
and revelry, according to Esquemeling:
[Illustration: A STREET IN CRUCES]
“On the 24th of February, of the year 1761, Captain Morgan departed from
the city of Panama, or rather from the place where the city of Panama
did stand. Of the spoils whereof he carried with him one hundred and
seventy-five beasts of carriage, laden with silver, gold and other
precious things, besides 600 prisoners more or less, between women,
children and slaves.”
[Illustration: BREAKING WAVES AT OLD PANAMA]
[Illustration: OLD BELL AT REMEDIOS, 1682]
So they plodded back to San Lorenzo whence they had started on their
piratical expedition. It affords a striking illustration of the strictly
business methods of these pirates that before reaching the castle Morgan
ordered a halt, and had every man searched for valuables, submitting
himself to the inquisition. So thorough was the search that even the
guns were shaken, upside down, lest precious stones might be concealed
in their barrels. However the buccaneers came to jeer at Morgan’s
apparent fairness in being searched with the rest, and putting his
personal pilferings into the common lot as a piece of duplicity. For the
loot of the Panama expedition has been reckoned at several millions of
dollars, and indeed a town of that size, famous for wealth and at a
period when the amassing of gold and jewels was a passion, should
certainly have produced that much. But when it came to the vital
operation of dividing the spoils the ordinary fighting men found that
for their four months’ campaign, they received about $100 apiece. “Which
small sum,” says the literary apothecary Esquemeling, who was “buncoed”
with the rest, “they thought too little reward for so much labor and
such huge and manifest dangers they had so often exposed their lives
unto. But Captain Morgan was deaf to all these and many other complaints
of this kind, having designed in his mind to cheat them of as much as he
could.”
Henry Morgan was indeed a practical pirate, who, had he but lived four
hundred years later, could have made vastly more money out of a town of
30,000 people by the mild devices of franchises and bonds, than he did
out of Panama with murder, the rack, robbery and rapine for his methods.
After setting the example of loyally putting his all into the common
store, he assumed the duty of dividing that store. This accomplished to
his liking, and knowing that idleness breeds discontent, and that
discontent is always hurtful to capital, he set his men to work pulling
the Castle of San Lorenzo to pieces. While they were thus engaged, one
dark night with favoring winds he hove anchor and with four ships,
filled with his English favorites, and laden with the lion’s share of
the booty, he sailed away from Chagres and from buccaneering forever. He
left behind all the French, Dutch and mongrel pirates--those ancient and
experienced ones. He left them some of the poorer ships--much as an
efficient gang of street railway looters leave some rusty rails and
decrepit cars to a town they have looted--but saw to it that none was
left that could possibly catch up with his fleet.
So the deserted buccaneers first fought awhile among themselves, then
dispersed. Some in an amateurish way sacked the town of Keys in Cuba.
Others went to Campeche and Honduras. Esquemeling with a small band went
up to Bocadel Toro, now the Panama headquarters of the United Fruit
Company, whence he made his way back to Europe. There he wrote his
“History of the Buccaneers,” which became one of the world’s “best
sellers,” and in which he gave his Captain Morgan “the worst of it”--a
species of satisfaction which is often the only recourse of the literary
man who gets tangled up with Big Business.
[Illustration: THE BEETLING CLIFFS OF THE UPPER CHAGRES]
As for Captain Morgan, he was made much of at Jamaica, where the crown’s
share of the proceeds of his piracy was cheerfully accepted by the
governor. But in England there was some embarrassment, for there was no
war with Spain and the complete destruction of a Spanish city by a force
bearing British flags was at least embarrassing. So by way of showing
its repentance and good intent the government announced its purpose to
suppress buccaneering and all piracy, and to that end created Henry
Morgan a baronet and put the commission in his hands--much as we have
been accustomed to put politicians on our civil service commissions, and
protected manufacturers on our tariff boards. So as _Sir_ Henry Morgan
this most wholesale robber and murderer Central America ever knew ended
his days in high respectability.
[Illustration: THE ROOTS REACH DOWN SEEKING FOR SOIL]
While the ruins of Old Panama compare but unfavorably with those of
Porto Bello or San Lorenzo, their proximity to the city of Panama make
them a favorite point of interest for tourists. Half a day is ample to
give to the drive out and back and to the inspection of the ruins
themselves. The extended area over which they are scattered testifies to
the size of the obliterated city, while the wide spaces, destitute of
any sign of occupation, which intervene between the remaining relics,
shows clearly that the greater part of the town must have been built of
perishable materials easily swept away at the time of the fire, or
slowly disintegrating during the flood of years that have since rolled
by. The tower of the Cathedral of St. Augustine alone among the relics
still remaining affords any suggestion of grandeur or even of
architectural dignity.
To reach the ruins you take a horse, a carriage or an automobile for a
ride of about five miles over an excellent road laid and maintained by
the Republic of Panama. If you go by horseback the old trail which the
pirates used is still traceable and at low tide one can ride along the
beach. For the majority the drive along the road, which should be taken
in the early morning, is the simpler way, though there was promise in
1913 that within a few months a trolley line would still further
simplify the trip.
From Balboa, the Pacific opening of the Panama Canal, and the newest of
the world’s great ports, to the ruins of Old Panama, founded in 1609 and
obliterated by pirates in 1671, by trolley in two hours! Was ever the
past more audaciously linked to the present? Were ever exhibits of the
peaceful commerce of today and the bloody raids of ancient times placed
in such dramatic juxtaposition?
The road to Old Panama runs through a peaceful grazing country, with a
very few plantations. One or two country residences of prosperous
Panamanians appear standing well back from the road, but signs of life
and of industry are few. The country lies high, is open and free from
jungle and in almost any North American state, lying thus close to a
town of 40,000 people and adjacent to a district in which the United
States is spending some millions of dollars a month, would be platted in
additions for miles around, and dotted with the signs of real estate
dealers. But the Panamanian mind is not speculative, or at any rate
soars little above the weekly lottery ticket. So all Uncle Samuel’s
disbursements in the Zone have thus far produced nothing remotely
resembling a real estate boom.
However as we turn off from the main road toward the sea and the square
broken tower of the old cathedral, or Church of St. Augustine, with the
ferns springing from the jagged top, and vines twisting out through the
dumbly staring windows, real estate and “booms” seem singularly ignoble
topics in the presence of this mute spectator of the agonies of a
martyred people. For even the dulling mists of the interposing
centuries, even our feeling that the Spaniards suffered only the anguish
and the torments which they had themselves meted out to the real owners
of the lands they had seized upon, cannot wholly blunt the sense of pity
for the women and children, for the husbands and fathers in the city
which fell under Morgan’s blight. It would be no easy task to gather in
the worst purlieus of any American city today a band so wholly lost to
shame, to pity and to God as the ruffians who followed Morgan. What they
did to the people on whom their hands reeking with blood were laid must
be left to the imagination. The only contemporary record of the sack was
written by one of their own number to whom apparently such scenes had
become commonplace, for while his gorge rises at the contemplation of
his own hard fortune in being robbed and deserted by his chief, he
recounts the torture of men and the violation of women in a
matter-of-fact way as though all in the day’s work.
[Illustration: BLUFF NEAR TORO POINT
Photographing this scene is now prohibited as a United States fort is to
be erected here]
Driving on we come to the arched bridge which formed the main entrance
to the town in the day of its downfall. Sturdy it is still, though the
public road no longer passes over it, defying the assaults of time and
the more disintegrating inroads of the tropical plants which insinuate
themselves into every crevice, prying the stone apart with tender
fingers ever hardening. At once the bridge, none too wide for three to
cross abreast, awakens wonder that no Horatius was in all the Spanish
armies to keep the bridge as did he of ancient Rome. But after all the
rivulet which today makes its sluggish way under the arch is no Tiber to
hold the invading army at bay. Perhaps it was bigger in Morgan’s time;
today it would be easily forded, almost leapt. At any rate no
“Dauntless Three” like those Macaulay sung were there to stay the
onrolling tide of foemen.
[Illustration: “WHETHER THE TREE OR THE WALL IS STOUTER IS A PROBLEM”]
Hardly have we passed the bridge than a massive vine-embedded ruin on
the left of the road stands mute evidence that the Spaniards had forts,
if they had but possessed the courage to defend them. This is the Casa
Reale, or government house. Its walls of rubble masonry are full two
feet thick and have the appearance of having been pierced for musketry.
If the buccaneers had any artillery at all, which is doubtful, it was
hardly heavy enough to have had any effect against such a wall. Secure
within the Casa Reale such a handful of men as held the Alamo against
the Mexicans could have resisted Morgan’s men indefinitely. But the
spirit was lacking. The stout walls of the Casa Reale stand now as
evidences of the character of the defenses the people of Panama had if
they but had the pluck to use them.
Continuing toward the sea the visitor next comes upon the ruins of the
Cathedral, which are in so shattered a state as to justify the belief
that either the invaders or the Spaniards themselves employed gunpowder
to wreck so massive an edifice. The flames and the work of the
vegetation could hardly have accomplished such complete destruction. The
tower alone retains definite form, rising about fifty feet from a dense
jungle, and lined within with vines and clinging trees that use the
ancient walls as a support and hasten their disintegration in so doing.
It is difficult even to trace the lines of the great church, so
thoroughly have its walls been demolished. Some of the massive arches
still stand all pendulous with vines.
At the water’s edge one still finds steps leading down into the sea, and
the remains of the old paved road to which at high tide the boats could
come with their cargoes of fish and country produce. If one happens to
visit the spot at low tide the view looking seaward is as ugly as could
well be imagined. The hard sand beach extends only to high water mark.
Beyond that for more than a mile seaward extends a dismal range of black
mud of about the consistency of putty. Near the shore it is seen to be
full of round holes from which crawl unsightly worms and small crabs. E.
C. Stedman puts its unsightly appearance in two lines:
“The tide still ebbs a league from quay,
The buzzards scour the empty bay.”
Along the strand still stand fragments of the old seawall, and at a
considerable distance from the Cathedral ruins you come upon another
large building of which little more than the lower walls and the
subterranean vaults still have form and coherence. The dungeon into
which visitors usually make their way is peculiarly dark, damp and
dismal, and the general air of ghoulishness is mightily enhanced by the
myriads of bats that hang from the ceiling and whirl and whiz away when
intruders light matches to study the moldering masonry. A most
interesting feature of this crypt is the great roots of the trees and
shrubs that sprung from seeds that had fallen into some crevice and
found there soil enough to germinate, but not sufficient to support life
as the plant grew larger. The roots twist and creep along the walls,
reaching out for earth below as unerringly as a giant boa creeps
sinuously through the jungle.
CHAPTER VI
REVOLUTIONS AND THE FRENCH REGIME
The history of the Isthmus from the fall of Old Panama to the time when
the government of the United States, without any particular pomp or
ceremony, took up the picks and shovels the French had laid down and
went to work on the Canal, may be passed over here in the lightest and
sketchiest way. It is of Panama of the Present, rather than Panama of
the Past, that I have to tell even though that past be full of
picturesque and racy incident. Curious enough is the way in which
through all those centuries of lawless no-government, Spanish
mis-government, and local self-government, tempered by annual
revolutions, there appears always the idea that some day there will be a
waterway across the neck of the continent. It was almost as hard for the
early Spaniards to abandon the idea that such a natural waterway existed
as it has been in later years to make the trans-continental railroads
understand that the American people intended to create such a strait.
The search for the natural waterway had hardly been abandoned when
discussion arose as to the practicability of creating an artificial one.
In its earlier days this project encountered not only the physical
obstacles which we had to overcome, but others springing from the rather
exaggerated piety of the time. Yet it was a chaplain to Cortez who first
suggested a canal to Philip II of Spain in words that have a good
twentieth-century ring to them, though their form be archaic: “It is
true,” he wrote, “that mountains obstruct these passes, but if there be
mountains there are also hands.” That is the spirit in which Uncle Sam
approached the Big Job. But when the sturdy chaplain’s appeal came to
King Philip he referred it to the priests of his council, who ruled it
out upon the scriptural injunction, “What God hath joined together let
no man put asunder,” and they were backed up by a learned prelate on the
Isthmus, Fray Josef de Acosta, who averred, “No human power will suffice
to demolish the most strong and impenetrable mountains, and solid rocks
which God has placed between the two seas, and which sustain the fury of
the two oceans. And when it would be to men possible it would in my
opinion be very proper to fear the chastisement of heaven for wishing to
correct the works which the Creator with greatest deliberation and
foresight ordained in the creation of this universe.”
[Illustration: SAN PABLO LOCK IN FRENCH DAYS]
Doubtless the Fray de Acosta was the more orthodox, but we like better
the spirit of the cleric who held the somewhat difficult post of
spiritual adviser to Cortez. His belief that “if there are mountains
there are also hands” is good doctrine, and we can believe that the good
father would have liked to have seen some of Col. Goethals’ steam
shovels biting into those mountains at five cubic yards a bite.
It seems strange that the four canal routes over the respective merits
of which the Senate of the United States was engaged in seemingly
interminable wrangle only a few years ago--Nicaragua, Darien, Panama and
Tehuantepec--should have been suggested by Cortez in the sixteenth
century. Nearly 250 years before the birth of the republic destined to
dig the canal this stout explorer from old Spain laid an unerring finger
upon the only routes which it could follow. Doubtless it was as well
that no effort was made at the time, yet it would be unwise for us with
smug twentieth-century self-sufficiency to assert that no other age than
ours could have put the project through. Perhaps the labor and skill
that raised the mighty city of Palmyra, or built the massive aqueducts
that in ruins still span the Roman Campagna, or carved the Colossi of
the Egyptian desert, might have been equal to the Panama problem.
In 1814 the Spanish cortes ordered surveys made for a canal, but nothing
came of it, and the great project lay quiescent as long as Spain’s power
in the Isthmus remained unshaken. More by the indifference of other
nations than by any right of their own, the Spanish had assumed
sovereignty over all of South and Central America. That they held the
country by virtue of a papal bull--such as that may be--and by right of
conquest is undeniable. But men begun to say that the Pope had given
Spain something he never owned, while so far as conquest was concerned
Morgan had taken from the Spanish all they ever won by force of arms on
the Isthmus. He did not hold what he had taken because he was a pirate
not a pioneer.
[Illustration: PART OF THE SEA WALL AT PANAMA]
The only serious effort to colonize in the Panama region by any people,
save Spaniards, was the founding of a colony of Scotch Presbyterians,
headed by one William Patterson, who had occupied a Scotch pulpit.
Beside theology he must have known something of finance, for he
organized, and was one of the first directors of, the Bank of England.
His colonization project in Panama was broadly conceived, but badly
executed. Taking the rich East India Company for a model he secured a
franchise from Scotland, granting him a monopoly of Scottish trade in
the Indies in return for an annual tribute of one hogshead of tobacco.
Capitalizing his company for $600,000, he backed the shares with his
reputation as a founder of the bank and saw the capital over-subscribed
in London. But the success woke up his rivals. They worked on the King,
persuaded him to denounce the action taken in Scotland and pushed a law
through the English Parliament outlawing the Scotch company in England.
In every country the people interested in the established companies
fought the interloper who was trying to break into their profitable
demesne. But the Scotch stuck to their guns. They rallied at first about
Patterson as in later years the French flocked to the support of De
Lesseps. Ships were built in Amsterdam, pistols were bought by
wholesale, brandy and bibles were both gathered in large quantities, and
in 1768 volunteers were called for to join the expedition. Every settler
was promised fifty acres of agricultural land and one fifty-foot town
lot.
[Illustration: THE PELICANS IN THE BAY OF PANAMA]
Politics had bothered Patterson at the outset by arraying the English
against the Scotch. Now religion added to the dissension. The church and
the kirk factions--or the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians--fell
afoul of each other. The kirk carried the executive council and
Patterson, the only man who knew anything about the expedition, was
permitted to accompany it only as an ordinary settler. Graft stepped in
and though the colonists paid for six months’ provisions they discovered
when far out at sea that they had but enough for two. Moreover nobody on
the ships knew where they were going to settle, for they sailed under
sealed orders. When these were opened and the tidings spread that Panama
and not the East Indies was the destination, there was renewed distrust
and disaffection.
[Illustration: ROAD FROM PANAMA TO LA BOCA]
The story of this luckless enterprise is short and dismal. On the voyage
out forty-four of the adventurers died, and after landing the deaths
continued with melancholy regularity. They were spared trouble with the
Indians who, on learning that they were no friends to the Spaniards,
welcomed them warmly, and urged them to join in driving the Spaniards
from the land. But illness held the 900 colonists gripped, and malaria,
the ruling pest of those tropical shores, is not wont to stimulate a
militant spirit. They had settled on the Atlantic coast in the Darien
region, as far from the rich traffic of the East Indies as though they
were in their old Caledonian homes. Curiously enough they made no effort
to get across to the Pacific, whence only could trade be conducted, but
perhaps that was as well, for the Spaniards though much broken by the
recent invasion of the buccaneers would have resisted such an advance to
their utmost.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT. 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT
OLD FRENCH CANAL AT MOUNT HOPE
Our engineers abandoned the French canal except as a docking place for
vessels and a waterway for carrying material to the foot of Gatun
locks.]
So the unhappy colonists of New Caledonia found themselves on a
miasmatic bit of land, remote from anything like civilization, with no
sign of trade to engage their activities, an avowed enemy at their back
and surrounded by Indians, the price of whose friendship was a
declaration of war upon the Spaniards. To make matters worse, the
King issued a proclamation prohibiting all governors of English colonies
in the West Indies from giving them aid or comfort, denouncing them as
outlaws.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE CITY PARK OF COLON]
Disheartened, the first colony broke up and sailed away, just when the
Company was dispatching two more ships from Scotland. The fugitives
sailed for New York, and on one of their ships carrying 250 men, 150 are
said to have died before reaching that port. As for the new colonists,
they reached the deserted fort of St. Andrew, and saw the mute evidences
of death and despair. From the Indians they learned the details of the
story, and a great majority voted to sail away without further delay.
Twelve however elected to stop, and being landed with a generous supply
of provisions, kept foothold in the colony until the third expedition
arrived. This consisted of four ships, which had left the Clyde with
about 1300 colonists. About 160 however died on the way out, and the
survivors were mightily distressed when instead of finding a thriving
colony of a thousand or more awaiting them, they discovered only twelve
Scotchmen living miserably in huts with the Indians.
The imaginative prospectus writer seems to have been no less active and
engaging at that time than in these days of mining promotions, and many
of the new colonists had come in the expectation of finding a land
watered by springs, the waters of which were “as soft as milk and very
nourishing,” a land wherein people lived 150 years, and to die at 125
was to be cut off in the flower of one’s youth. What they found was
twelve haggard Scotchmen in a primeval forest, ill-fed, unclothed,
dependent largely on the charity of the Indians, and who, so far from
looking confidently forward to an hundred more years of life cried
dolorously to the newcomers, “Take us hence or we perish.”
The new colonists, however, had pluck. Stifling their disappointment,
they disembarked and settled down to make the colony a success.
According to the records they had brought five forces for disintegration
and failure along with them--namely four ministers and a most prodigious
lot of brandy. The ancient chroniclers do not say upon which of these
rests the most blame for the disasters that followed. The ministers
straightway set up to be rulers of the colony. When stockades should be
a-building all were engaged in erecting houses for them. As but two
could preach in the space of one Sunday, they designated two holy days
weekly whereon they preached such resounding sermons that “the regular
service frequently lasted twelve hours without any interruption.” Nor
would they do other work than sermonizing. As for the brandy, all the
records of the colony agree that much too much of it and of the curious
native drinks was used by all, and that the ministers themselves were
wont to reinvigorate themselves after their pulpit exertions by mighty
potations.
[Illustration: CHILDREN IN A NATIVE HUT]
Yet the colony was not wholly without a certain sturdy self reliance.
Seeing it persist despite all obstacles, the Spaniards dispatched a
force of soldiers from Panama to destroy it. Campbell waylaid them in
the jungle and overthrew them. Then the King of Spain became alarmed and
sent eight Spanish men-of-war to make an end of these interlopers--the
King of England and Scotland coldly leaving them to their fate. But they
fought so bravely that in the end the Spanish, though their fleet had
been reënforced by three ships, were obliged to grant them capitulation
with the honors of war, and they “marched out with their colors flying
and drums beating, together with arms and ammunition, and with all their
goods.”
[Illustration: THE WATER FRONT OF PANAMA]
So ended the effort to make of Darien an outpost of Scotland. In the
effort 2000 lives and over £200,000 had been lost. Macaulay explains it
by saying, “It was folly to suppose that men born and bred within ten
degrees of the Arctic circle would enjoy excellent health within ten
degrees of the equator.” But Lord Macaulay forgot to reckon on the
hostility of the East India Company, whose monopoly was threatened, the
plenteousness of the brandy and the zeal of the four ministers.
[Illustration: THE WATER GATE OF PANAMA]
After the expulsion of the Scotch, the domination of the Isthmus by the
Spaniards was never again seriously menaced by any foreign power. All
the vast South and Central American domain was lost to Spain, not by the
attacks of her European neighbors, but by the revolt of their people
against a government which was at one time inefficient and tyrannical.
The French Revolution and the Napoleonic upheaval in Europe found their
echo in South America, where one after another the various states threw
off the Spanish yoke. But Panama, then known as Terra Firma, was slow to
join in the revolutionary activities of her neighbors. It is true that
in 1812 the revolutionists became so active in Bogotá, the capital of
the province, that the seat of government was temporarily removed to
Panama City. But the country as a whole was sluggish.
Four classes of citizens, European Spaniards, their sons, born on the
Isthmus, and called creoles, the Indians and the negroes, made up the
population and were too diverse by birth and nature to unite for any
patriotic purpose. Accordingly through the period of breaking shackles,
which made Bolivar famous the world over and created the great group of
republics in South America, the state of which the Isthmus was a part
remained quiescent. In 1814 revolutionists vainly tried to take Porto
Bello, but that famous fortress which never resisted a foreign foe
successfully, beat off the patriots. Panama was at this time in high
favor at Madrid because of its loyalty and the Cortes passed resolutions
for the building of a canal, but went no further. But all the time the
revolutionary leaven was working beneath the surface. In 1821 a field
marshal from Spain, charged with the task of crushing out the revolution
in Colombia and Ecuador, stripped Porto Bello, San Lorenzo and Panama of
the greater part of their garrisons and took them to Guayaquil. By
bribes and promises the local patriots persuaded the few soldiers
remaining to desert and, with no possibility of resistance, the
independence of Panama from Spain was declared. Early in 1822 Panama
became the Department of the Isthmus in the Republic of Colombia.
It would be idle to describe, even to enumerate, all the revolutions
which have disquieted the Isthmus since it first joined Colombia in
repudiating the Spanish rule. They have been as thick as insects in the
jungle. No physical, social or commercial ties bound Panama to Colombia
at any time during their long association. A mountain range divided the
two countries and between the cities of Panama and Bogotá there was no
communication by land. In foreign commerce the province of Panama
exceeded the parent state, while the possession of the shortest route
across the Isthmus was an asset of which both Bogotáns and Panamanians
keenly realized the value.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
ENTRANCE TO MT. HOPE CEMETERY]
Revolutions were annual occurrences, sometimes hard fought, for the
people of Panama have plenty of courage in the field; sometimes ended
with the first battle. The name of the parent state has been sometimes
Colombia, sometimes New Granada; Panama has at times been independent,
at others a state of the Federation of New Granada; at one time briefly
allied with Ecuador and Venezuela. In 1846 the volume of North American
travel across the Isthmus became so great that the United States
entered into a treaty with New Granada in which we guaranteed to keep
the Isthmus open for transit. That and the building, by American capital
of the Panama Railroad, made us a directly interested party in all
subsequent revolutions. Of these there were plenty. President Theodore
Roosevelt, defending in 1903 the diplomatic methods by which he “took”
Panama, enumerated no fewer than fifty-three revolutions in the
fifty-seven years that had elapsed since the signing of the treaty. He
summed up the situation thus:
“The above is only a partial list of the revolutions, rebellions,
insurrections, riots, and other outbreaks that have occurred during the
period in question; yet they number fifty-three for the last fifty-seven
years. It will be noted that one of them lasted nearly three years
before it was quelled; another for nearly a year. In short, the
experience of nearly half a century has shown Colombia to be utterly
incapable of keeping order on the Isthmus. Only the active interference
of the United States has enabled her to preserve so much as a semblance
of sovereignty. Had it not been for the exercise by the United States of
the police power in her interest, her connection with the Isthmus would
have been severed long ago.”
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL PLAZA, PANAMA
The building in the center was by turns the French and the American
Administration Building]
We are apt to think of these revolutions as mere riots, uprisings
somewhat after the sort of Falstaff’s seven men in buckram, and savoring
much of the opera bouffe. Such, to a great extent they were, and
curiously enough none of them, except for its outcome, was less serious
or dignified than the final one which won for Panama its freedom from
Colombia, and for the United States the ten miles’ strip across the
ocean called the Canal Zone. That was perhaps the only revolution in
history by which was created a new and sovereign-state, and the issue of
which was finally determined by the inability of a commanding general
to pay the fares for his troops over forty-eight miles of railroad. Of
that, however, more hereafter.
[Illustration: AVENIDA CENTRALE
The building with the rounded corner balcony is the American Consulate]
Of course, during all the revolutions and counter revolutions the idea
of the canal had steadily grown. England at one time took a mild
interest in it and sent one Horatio Nelson to look over the land. The
young naval officer’s health failed him and he returned to become in
later years the hero of Trafalgar and the Nile. Later, the great German
scientist, Baron von Humboldt, in the course of a famous voyage to South
America, spent some time on the Isthmus, and wrote much of its natural
features, enumerating nine routes for a canal including of course the
one finally adopted. Louis Napoleon, though never on the Isthmus,
dreamed out the possibilities of a canal when he was a prisoner in the
fortress of Ham. Had he succeeded in maintaining Maximilian on the
throne of Mexico he might have made the Isthmian history very different.
Among our own people, De Witt Clinton, builder of the Erie Canal, and
Henry Clay, were the first to plan for an American canal across the
Isthmus, but without taking practical steps to accomplish it.
Canal schemes, however, were almost as numerous as revolutions in the
years preceding 1903. Darien, Panama, Tehuantepec, Nicaragua have all
been considered at various times, and the last named for some time was a
very close second to Panama in favor. There is reason to believe that
the government of the United States deliberately “nursed” the Nicaragua
project in order to exact better terms from Colombia, which held the
Panama route at an exorbitant figure.
[Illustration: ANCON HILL AT SUNSET]
The honor of actually inaugurating the canal work must ever belong to
the French, as the honor of completing it will accrue to us. It is not
the first time either that the French and the Americans worked together
to accomplish something on this continent. Yorktown and Panama ought to
be regarded as chapters of the story of a long partnership. In 1876
Ferdinand de Lesseps, with the glory of having dug the Suez Canal still
untarnished, became interested in the Panama situation as the result of
representations made by a French engineer, Napoleon B. Wyse. Lieut. Wyse
had made a survey of the Isthmus and, in connection with Gen. Stephen
Turr, a Hungarian, had secured a concession from Colombia to run
ninety-nine years after the completion of the canal, with a payment to
Colombia of $250,000 annually after the seventy-fifth year had expired.
This franchise was transferable by sale to any other private company but
could not be sold to a government--a proviso which later complicated
greatly the negotiations with the United States.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
ABANDONED FRENCH MACHINERY ON THE CANAL]
De Lesseps was instantly interested. The honors which had been heaped
upon him as the result of his successful operation at Suez were very
grateful to him. The French temperament is particularly avid of praise
and public honor. Moreover, he sincerely believed in the practicability
of the plan and, neither at the outset or later, did any one fully
enlighten him as to the prodigious obstacles to be encountered. Lieut.
Wyse had interested a group of financiers who scented in the scheme a
chance for great profits, and to their project the name of De Lesseps
was all important. For advertising purposes it had the value of that of
Roosevelt today. To launch the project successfully money was needed,
and this they found. Some sort of professional approval, in addition to
the De Lesseps name, was desirable and this they provided by calling
together an International Scientific Congress at Paris to discuss the
great undertaking. One hundred and sixty-four delegates were present, of
whom forty-two were engineers and only eleven Americans. It was charged
at the time that the congress was more political than scientific and
furthermore that it was “packed” so as to register only the will of De
Lesseps, who in turn recommended in the main such measures as the
syndicate putting up the money desired. However, the Congress gave a
quasi-public and scientific appearance to a project which was really
conceived only as a money-making proposition by a group of financiers.
There was and has since been bitter criticism of the vote by which the
Congress declared for a sea-level canal--a decision which the French
themselves were forced to reverse and which the United States definitely
abandoned early in its work. In the French Congress there were less than
100 of the 164 delegates present when the vote was taken. Seventy-eight
voted for sea-level and a majority of the engineers voted against it.
[Illustration: OVERWHELMED BY THE JUNGLE]
[Illustration: A LOTTERY TICKET SELLER]
In my description of the canal work the fundamental differences between
the respective advantages of the sea-level and the lock type of canal
will continually reappear. At this moment it is enough to say that the
obstacles to the sea-level plan are to be found in Culebra Hill and the
Chagres River. In the lock type of canal the cut at Culebra is 495 feet
below the crest of Gold Hill and 364 feet below the crest of
Contractor’s Hill opposite. The top width of this cut is over half a
mile. To carry the canal to sea-level would mean a further cut of
eighty-five feet with vastly enhanced liability of slides. As for the
Chagres River, that tricky stream crosses the line of the old French
canal twenty-three times. As the river is sometimes three or four feet
deep one day and nearly fifty feet deep at the same point the next--a
turbid, turbulent, roaring torrent, carrying trees, huts and boulders
along with it--the canal could obviously not exist with the Chagres in
its path. The French device was to dam the stream some miles above the
point at which the canal first crossed it and lead it away through an
artificial channel into the Pacific instead of into the Atlantic, where
it now empties. This task the American engineers have avoided by damming
the Chagres at Gatun, and making a great lake eighty-five feet above the
level of the sea through which the canal extends and which covers and
obliterates the twenty-three river crossings which embarrassed the
engineers of the sea-level canal.
It is fair to say, however, that today (1913), with the lock canal
approaching completion, there is a very large and intelligent body of
Americans who still hold that the abandonment of the sea-level plan was
an error. And it is a curious fact that while De Lesseps was accused of
“packing” his congress so as to vote down the report for a lock canal
which a majority of the engineers voting favored, Roosevelt, after a
majority of his “International Board of Consulting Engineers” had voted
for a sea-level canal, set aside their recommendation and ordered the
lock type instead.
[Illustration: MACHINERY SEEMINGLY AS HOPELESS AS THIS WAS RECOVERED AND
SET TO WORK]
Immediately after the adjournment of the International Congress at Paris
the stock of the canal company, $60,000,000 as a first issue, was
offered to the investing public. It was largely over-subscribed. The
French are at once a thrifty and an emotional people. Their thrift gives
them instant command of such sums of ready cash as astound financiers
of other nations. Their emotionalism leads them to support any great
national enterprise that promises glory for _La Patrie_, has in it a
touch of romance and withal seems economically safe. The canal
enterprise at the outset met all these conditions, and the commanding
figure of De Lesseps at its head, the man who had made Africa an island
and who dogmatically declared, “the Panama Canal will be more easily
begun, finished and maintained than the Suez Canal,” lured the francs
from their hiding places in woolen stockings or under loose hearth
stones.
[Illustration: THE POWER OF THE JUNGLE
Note how the tree has grown around and into this steel dump car at San
Pablo]
[Illustration: LA FOLIE DINGLER
This house, built by the French for $150,000, was sold for $25.00 by the
Americans]
[Illustration: NEAR THE PACIFIC ENTRANCE TO THE CANAL
The suction dredge is an inheritance from the French and still working]
It has been the practice of many writers upon the canal to ridicule the
unsuccessful effort of the French to complete it; to expatiate upon the
theatrical display which attended their earlier operations, and the
reckless extravagance which attended the period when the dire
possibility of failure first appeared to their vision; to overlook the
earnest and effective work done by the Frenchmen actually on the Isthmus
while riveting attention on the blackmailers and parasites in Paris who
were destroying the structure at its very foundations. It is significant
that none of the real workers on the canal do this. Talk with the
engineers and you will find them enthusiastic over the engineering work
done by the French. Those sturdy, alert Americans who are now putting
the Big Job through will take pains to give their predecessors the
fullest credit for work done, for dirt moved, for surveys made and for
machinery designed--a great lot of it is in use on the line today,
including machines left exposed in the jungle twenty years. Hundreds of
their buildings are still in use. If, after listening to the honest and
generous praise expressed by our engineers, the visitor will go out to
the cemetery of Mount Hope, near Cristobal, and read the lines on the
headstones of French boys who came out full of hope and ambition to be
cut down at twenty-two, twenty-five--all boyish ages--he will reflect
that it is ill to laugh because the forlorn hope does not carry the
breastworks, but only opens the way for the main army. And there are
many little French graveyards scattered about the Isthmus which make one
who comes upon them unawares feel that the really vital thing about the
French connection with the canal was not that the first blast which it
had been prepared to celebrate with some pomp failed to explode, or that
the young engineers did not understand that champagne mixed but badly
with a humid and malarial climate, but that the flower of a great and
generous nation gave their lives in a struggle with hostile nature
before science had equipped man with the knowledge to make the struggle
equal.
[Illustration: WHERE THE FRENCH DID THEIR BEST WORK
The greatest amount of excavations by the French was in Culebra Cut]
Today along a great part of our canal line the marks of the French
attainments are apparent. From Limon Bay, at the Atlantic end of the
canal, our engineers for some reason determined upon an entirely new
line for our canal, instead of following the French waterway, which was
dug for seven miles to a depth of fifteen feet, and for eight miles
further, seven feet deep. This canal has been used very largely by our
force in carrying material for the Gatun dam. At the Pacific entrance
they had dug a narrow channel three miles long which we are still using.
We paid the French company $40,000,000 for all its rights on the
Isthmus. There are various rumors as to who got the money. Some, it is
believed, never went far from New York, for with all their thrift the
French are no match for our high financiers. But whoever got the money
we got a good bargain. The estimate of our own commission in 1911 values
the physical property thus transferred at $42,799,826.
Bad luck, both comic and tragic, seemed to attend the French endeavors.
Count De Lesseps, with a national fondness for the dramatic, arranged
two ceremonies to properly dignify the actual beginning of work upon the
canal. The first was to be the breaking of ground for the Pacific
entrance, which was to be at the mouth of the Rio Grande River in the
Bay of Panama. A distinguished company gathered on the boat chartered
for the occasion at Panama, and there was much feasting, speaking and
toasting. Every one was so imbued with enthusiasm that no one thought
of so material a thing as the tide. On the Pacific coast the tide rises
and falls twenty feet or more, and while the guests were emptying their
glasses the receding tide was emptying the bay whither they were bound.
When they arrived they found that nearly two miles of coral rock and mud
flats separated them from the shore where the historic sod was to be
turned. Accordingly, excavation was begun _pro forma_ in a champagne box
filled with earth on the deck of the ship. The little daughter of De
Lesseps dealt the first blow of the pick, followed by representatives of
Colombia. To complete the ceremony the Bishop of Panama gravely blessed
the work thus auspiciously begun, and the canal builders steamed back to
Panama.
[Illustration: AN OLD SPANISH CHURCH
This edifice, still standing at Nata, is said to be the oldest church in
Panama]
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
JUNCTURE OF FRENCH AND AMERICAN CANALS
The American Canal is the wider, and affords the more direct route to
the sea]
Later, the same party assembled to witness the first blast at
Culebra--for the French made the first attack on that redoubtable
fortress, which after the lapse of thirty-five years is stubbornly
resisting our American sappers and miners. But after due preparations,
including wine, the fair hand of Mlle. Ferdinande De Lesseps pressed the
button--and nothing happened. Some fault in the connections made the
electric spark impotent, and the chroniclers of the time do not record
exactly when the blast was actually fired. But in the official canal
paper the ceremony was described as “perfectly successful,” and the
reporter added that picturesque detail which Koko said “imparts an
artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and uninteresting
statement of fact,” by saying that the rocks were “much less resistant
than we had expected.”
[Illustration: PART OF THE TOLL OF LIFE
This cemetery on the westerly slope of Ancon Hill is one of the Zone’s
pathetic spots]
These needless ceremonies and the false reports which attended them were
merely what in our cynical age and nation are called press-agent
“stunts,” and were necessitated by the need for interesting the French
people in the work, lest they let the market for the shares slump. They
were early symptoms of the evil that culminated in the revelations of
blackmail and forced tribute paid the French press when the final
collapse was impending and inevitable.
De Lesseps indeed was a master in the art of “working the press,” and
had he confined his activities to that, without interfering with his
engineers, history might have told a different story of his canal
management. But lest doubt should seize upon would-be investors, he
continually cut down the estimates of his engineers, and issued
flamboyant proclamations announcing triumphs that had not been won and
prophesying a rate of progress that never could be attained. When his
very capable Technical Commission, headed by Col. George M. Totten, the
builder of the Panama Railroad, estimated the total cost of the canal at
$168,600,000, he took the report to his cabin on shipboard and there
arbitrarily, with no possible new data, lopped off about $37,000,000.
Even at that, he calmly capitalized his company at 600,000,000 francs or
$120,000,000, though his own estimate of the cost of the canal exceeded
that amount by more than $12,000,000. One-half of his capital stock or
$60,000,000 the Count had reserved for the United States, but sold not a
dollar’s worth. The $60,000,000 first offered in France was, however,
eagerly subscribed. Of course it was wholly insufficient.
We know, what the unfortunate French investors could not, and their
directors probably did not know, that the canal could never be built by
a private company seeking profit. Neither could it be built by private
contract, as we discovered after some discouraging experiences of our
own. The French builders were at the mercy of the stock market. A
hurtful rumor, true or false, might at any time shut off their money
supplies. Experience has pretty thoroughly demonstrated that the
confidence of the investing public cannot long be maintained by false
reports or futile promises, but both of these devices the French worked
until the inevitable catastrophe.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE ANCON HOSPITAL GROUNDS
The beauty of the grounds is due to early French planning]
[Illustration: A SUNKEN RAILROAD
Nine feet below the boat is the roadbed of the old Panama railroad]
Disease on the Isthmus coöperated with distrust in Paris to bring about
failure. The French in 1880 knew nothing of the modern scientific
systems for checking yellow-fever contagion and the spread of malaria.
The part mosquitoes play as carriers of disease germs was not dreamed
of. Beyond building excellent hospitals for the sick, some of which we
still use, and dosing both sick and well liberally with quinine, they
had no plan of campaign against “Yellow Jack.” As a result, death
stalked grimly among them, and the stories written of his ravages are
ghastly. On the south side of Ancon Hill, where the quarry has gashed
the hillside, stood, until recently, a large frame house, built for
Jules Dingler, first director-general of canal work. It cost $150,000,
though perhaps worth a third of that sum, and was called “La Folie
Dingler.” But it was a rather tragic folly for poor Dingler, for before
he had fairly moved into it his wife, son and daughter died of yellow
fever and he returned to Paris to die too of a broken heart. His house,
in which he anticipated such happiness, became a smallpox hospital, and
was finally sold for $25 with the stipulation that the purchaser remove
it.
[Illustration: A ZONE WORKING VILLAGE
The low houses were built by the French: all screening added by
Americans]
A dinner was given M. Henri Boinne, secretary-general of the company.
Some one remarked that there were thirteen at the table, whereupon the
guest of honor remarked gaily that as he was the last to come he would
have to pay for all. In two weeks he was dead--yellow fever. Others at
the dinner followed him. Of the members of one surveying party on the
upper waters of the Chagres--a region I myself visited without a
suggestion of ill effects--every one, twenty-two in all, were prostrated
by disease and ten died. Bunau-Varilla, whose name is closely linked
with the canal, says: “Out of every one hundred individuals arriving on
the Isthmus, I can say without exaggeration that only twenty have been
able to remain at their posts at the working stations, and even in that
number many who were able to present an appearance of health had lost
much of their courage.”
Col. Gorgas tells of a party of eighteen young Frenchmen who came to the
Isthmus, all but one of whom died within a month. The Mother Superior of
the nursing sisters in the French hospital at Ancon lost by fever
twenty-one out of twenty-four sisters who had accompanied her to the
Isthmus.
How great was the total loss of French lives can only be guessed. The
hospital records show that at Ancon, 1041 patients died of yellow fever.
Col. Gorgas figures that as many died outside the hospital. All the
French records are more or less incomplete and their authenticity
doubtful because apprehension for the tender hopes and fears of the
shareholders led to the suppression of unpleasant facts. The customary
guess is that two out of every three Frenchmen who went to the Isthmus
died there. Col. Gorgas, who at one time figures the total loss during
the French régime at 16,500, recently raised his estimate to 22,000,
these figures of course including negro workmen. Little or no effort
was made to induce sanitary living, as under the Americans, and so
ignorant were the French--as indeed all physicians were at that time--of
the causes of the spread of yellow fever, that they set the legs of the
hospital beds in shallow pans of water to keep the ants from creeping to
the beds. The ants were stopped, but the water bred hosts of wrigglers
from which came the deadly _stegomyia_ mosquito, which carries the
yellow-fever poison from the patient to the well person. Had the
hospital been designed to spread instead of to cure disease its managers
could not have planned better.
[Illustration: NEGRO QUARTERS, FRENCH TOWN OF EMPIRE
Paving and sanitary arrangements due to American régime]
It is a curious fact that, in a situation in which the toll of death is
heaviest, man is apt to be most reckless and riotous in his pleasures.
The old drinking song of the English guardsmen beleaguered during the
Indian mutiny voices the almost universal desire of strong men to flaunt
a gay defiance in the face of death:
“Stand! Stand to your glasses steady,
’Tis all we have left to prize,
One cup to the dead already,
Hurrah, for the next that dies”.
Wine, wassail and, I fear, women were much in evidence during the hectic
period of the French activities. The people of the two Isthmian towns
still speak of it as the _temps de luxe_. Dismal thrift was banished and
extravagance was the rule. Salaries were prodigious. Some high officials
were paid from $50,000 to $100,000 a year with houses, carriages,
traveling expenses and uncounted incidentals. Expenditures for
residences were lavish, and the nature of the structures still standing
shows that graft was the chief factor in the cost. The director-general
had a $40,000 bath-house, and a private railway car costing
$42,000--which is curiously enough almost exactly $1000 for each mile of
the railroad it traversed. The hospital buildings at Colon cost
$1,400,000 and one has but to look at them today to wonder how even the
$400,000 was spent.
The big graft that finally was one of the prime factors in wrecking the
company was in Paris, but enough went on in Colon and Panama to make
those two towns as full of easy money as a mining camp after a big
strike. The pleasures of such a society are not refined. Gambling and
drinking were the less serious vices. A French commentator of the time
remarks, “Most of the commercial business of Panama is transacted
standing and imbibing cocktails--always the eternal cocktail! Afterward,
if the consumer had the time and money to lose, he had only to cross the
hall to find himself in a little room, crowded with people where
roulette was going on. Oh this roulette, how much it has cost all grades
of canal employees! Its proprietor must make vast profits. Admission is
absolutely free; whoever wishes may join in the play. A democratic mob
pushes and crowds around the table. One is elbowed at the same time by a
negro, almost in rags, anxiously thrusting forward his ten sous, and by
a portly merchant with his pockets stuffed with piasters and bank
notes”.
These towns, which bought and consumed French champagnes and other wines
by the shipload, could not afford to build a water system. Water was
peddled in the streets by men carrying great jars, or conducting carts
with tanks. There were millions for roulette, poker and the lottery, but
nothing for sewers or pavements and during the wet season the people,
natives and French both, waded ankle deep in filth which would have
driven a blooded Berkshire hog from his sty. When from these man-created
conditions of drink and dirt, disease was bred and men died like the
vermin among which they lived, they blamed the climate, or the Chagres
River.
Amidst it all the work went on. So much stress has been laid upon the
riot in the towns that one forgets the patient digging out on the hills
and in the jungle. In 1912 the Secretary of the United States Canal
Commission estimated the amount of excavation done by the French, useful
to our canal, at 29,709,000 cubic yards worth $25,389,000. That by no
means represented all their work, for our shift in the line of the canal
made much of their excavation valueless. Between Gold Hill and
Contractor’s Hill in the Culebra Cut, where our struggle with the
obstinate resistance of nature has been fiercest, the French cut down
161 feet, all of it serviceable to us. Their surveys and plats are
invaluable, and their machinery, which tourists seeing some pieces
abandoned to the jungle condemn in the lump, has been of substantial
value to us both for use and for sale.
[Illustration: FILTH THAT WOULD DRIVE A BERKSHIRE FROM HIS STY
A typical scene in the negro quarters of Colon during the period of
French activity in Panama]
But under the conditions as they found them, the French could never have
completed the canal. Only a government could be equal to that task.
President Roosevelt found to his own satisfaction at least that neither
private contract nor civilian management was adequate. Most
emphatically, if the desire for profit was to be the sole animating
force the canal could never be built at all. When the discovery that
the canal enterprise would never be a “big bonanza” dawned on the French
stockholders distrust was rapidly succeeded by panic. Vainly did De
Lesseps repeat his favorite formula, “The canal will be built.” Vainly
did the officers of the company pay tribute to the blackmailers that
sprung up on every side--journalists, politicians, discharged employees,
every man who knew a weak point in the company’s armor. Reorganizations,
new stock issues, changes of plan, appeals for government aid, bond
issues, followed one after another. The sea-level canal was abandoned
and a lock canal substituted. After repeated petitions the French
Chamber of Deputies, salved with some of the spoil, authorized an issue
of lottery bonds and bankruptcy was temporarily averted. A new company
was formed but the work languished, just enough in fact being done to
keep the concession alive. After efforts to enlist the coöperation of
the United States, the company in despair offered to sell out altogether
to that government, and after that proffer the center of interest was
transferred from Paris to Washington.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood and Underwood_
CANAL VALLEY NEAR PEDRO MIGUEL
Through the line of hills in the background extends the deepest part of
the Culebra Cut]
The French had spent in all about $260,000,000 and sacrificed about 2000
French lives before they drew the fires from their dredges, left their
steam shovels in the jungle and turned the task over to the great
American Republic.
CHAPTER VII
THE UNITED STATES BEGINS WORK
The probable failure of the French became apparent some years before the
actual collapse occurred and public opinion in the United States was
quite ready for the assumption of the work and its expense by our
government. Of course that opinion was not wholly spontaneous--public
opinion rarely is, notwithstanding the idealists. There were many
parties in interest who found it profitable to enlist various agencies
for awakening public opinion in this country to the point of buying the
French property and saving something out of the wreck for the French
stockholders. But, as a matter of fact, little artificial agitation was
needful. The people of the United States readily agreed that a
trans-isthmian canal should be built and owned by the United States
government. There was honest difference of opinion as to the most
practicable route and even today in the face of the victory over nature
at Panama there are many who hold that the Nicaragua route would have
been better.
Naturally the start made by the French had something to do with turning
the decision in favor of the Isthmus, but it was not decisive. The
French had no rights that they could sell except the right of veto
conferred by their ownership of the Panama Railroad. Their franchise
from Colombia expressly prohibited its transfer to any other government,
so it was unsalable. But the charter of the Panama Railroad, which the
French had acquired, provided that no interoceanic canal should be built
in Colombia without the consent of the railroad corporation. This to
some extent gave the French the whiphand. What they had to sell was the
controlling stock of the railroad company, the land they had acquired in
Colombia, the machinery on the spot and the work they had completed. But
all of this was of little value without a franchise from Colombia and
the one the French held could not be transferred to a government, and
was of little worth anyway as it would expire in 1910, unless the canal
were completed by that year--a physical impossibility.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
PANAMA SOLDIERS GOING TO CHURCH]
In 1898 the race of the battleship “Oregon” around Cape Horn to join the
United States fleet off Cuba in the Spanish-American war offered just
the graphic and specific argument necessary to fix the determination of
the American people to dig that canal and to own it. That voyage of
10,000 miles which might have been avoided by a ditch fifty miles long
revolted the common sense of the nation, and the demand for instant
action on the canal question was universal. Accordingly in 1899
President McKinley appointed what was known as the Walker Commission,
because headed by Admiral John G. Walker, to investigate all Central
American routes. They had the data collected during almost a century at
their disposal and very speedily settled down to the alternative between
the Panama and the Nicaragua routes. Over this choice controversy raged
long and noisily. While it was in progress the bullet of an assassin
ended the life of President McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt succeeded
him.
The Isthmian Canal was precisely the great, epoch-marking spectacular
enterprise to enlist the utmost enthusiasm and energy of this peculiarly
dynamic President. A man of strong convictions he favored the Panama
route--and got it. He believed in a lock canal--and enforced his beliefs
over the report of the engineers whose expert professional opinions he
invited. Of a militant temperament he thought the canal should be dug by
the army--and that is the way it was built. Not over tolerant of other
people’s rights he thought the United States should have a free hand
over the canal and adjacent territory--and when Colombia, which happened
to own that territory, was slow in accepting this view he set up out of
nothing over night the new Republic of Panama, recognized it as a
sovereign state two days afterwards, concluded a treaty with it, giving
the United States all he thought it should have, and years later, in a
moment of frankness declared “I took Panama, and left Congress to debate
it later.”
[Illustration: THE OFFICIAL UMPIRE, COCLE]
About the political morality and the personal ethics of the Roosevelt
solution of the diplomatic problem there will ever be varying opinions.
Colombia is still mourning for her ravished province of Panama and
refuses to be comforted even at a price of $10,000,000 which has been
tentatively offered as salve for the wound. But that the canal in 1913
is just about ten years nearer completion than it would be had not
Roosevelt been President in 1903 is a proposition generally accepted.
History--which is not always moral--is apt to applaud results regardless
of methods, and the Republic and Canal of Panama are likely to be
Roosevelt’s most enduring monuments--though the canal may outlast the
Republic.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE MAN AND THE MACHINE
President Roosevelt and the monster steam shovel figure largely in the
story of Panama]
Prior to this time there had been several sporadic negotiations opened
with different nations of Central America for canal rights. The most
important one was a treaty signed at Bogotá in 1870 by an envoy
especially authorized by President Grant. But this treaty was never
ratified by our Senate, and was amended out of acceptable form by the
Colombian Senate. For the purposes of this narrative we may well
consider the diplomatic history of the canal to begin with the passage
of the Spooner act in 1902. This act, written by Senator John C. Spooner
of Wisconsin, authorized the Panama route if the French property could
be bought for $40,000,000 and the necessary right of way secured from
Colombia. Failing this the Commission of seven members created by the
act was authorized to open negotiations with Nicaragua. Events made it
quite apparent that the Nicaragua clause was inserted merely as a club
to be used in the negotiations with Colombia and the French company.
With the latter it proved highly effective, for although the American
attorney for the company, Mr. William Nelson Cromwell, fixed a price at
first upon the property of $101,141,500 an apparently active opening of
negotiations with Nicaragua caused an immediate drop to the prescribed
$40,000,000. With that offer in hand the Commission unanimously reported
to the President in favor of the Panama route.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
LANDING PIGS FOR MARKET]
The Republic of Colombia was less tractable, and naturally so as it held
a stronger hand. When negotiations began the French concession had but
seven years more of life. If their progress could be prolonged for that
period practically all that the United States would have paid the French
would be paid to Colombia. Meanwhile the French property was wholly
unsalable without a Colombian franchise. The one weak point in the
Colombian armor was the possibility that the United States might finally
turn to Nicaragua, but this contingency was made unlikely by the report
of the Commission, and by the general desire of the American people
which was undoubtedly for the Panama route.
[Illustration: THE TRAIL NEAR CULEBRA]
In 1903 the Colombian Minister at Washington negotiated with Senator Hay
a treaty which by a lucky chance failed of ratification in the Panama
Senate. It never reached our Senate, but it is quite incredible that it
could have succeeded there, for it had several features that would have
led to endless disagreement between the two countries--might indeed have
resulted in the United States annexing Colombia altogether. For example
the Canal Zone was to be governed by a joint commission of the two
countries--Colombia remaining sovereign over the territory. The United
States was to explicitly guarantee the sovereignty of Colombia against
all the world. Colombia was to police the Zone. Each of these sections
was big with possibilities of trouble. That Colombia did not speedily
ratify this treaty would be inexplicable, for it was all to the
Colombian good, except for the fact that by delaying any action for
seven years the French property along the line of the canal, valued at
$40,000,000, would drop into the Colombian treasury.
[Illustration: IN THE BANANA COUNTRY, ON THE COAST NEAR BOCAS DEL TORO]
Delay, however, while good enough for the Colombians, did not suit the
Panamanians, nor did it please Theodore Roosevelt, whom Providence,
while richly endowing him otherwise, had not invested with patience in
the face of opposition. The Panamanians, by whom for the purposes of
this narrative I mean chiefly the residents of Colon and the city of
Panama, wanted to see some American money spent in their various marts
of trade. The French were rapidly disappearing. The business of all
their commercial institutions from dry goods stores down to saloons was
falling off. Even the lottery did not thrive as of yore and the
proprietors of the lesser games of chance, that in those days were run
quite openly, were reduced to the precarious business of robbing each
other. All these and other vested interests called for immediate
negotiation of any sort of a treaty which would open the spigots of
Uncle Sam’s kegs of cash over the two thirsty Isthmian towns. It was
irksome too to think that the parent state of Colombia would make the
treaty and handle the cash accruing under it. The Yankees were ready to
pay $10,000,000 down, and it was believed a further rental of $250,000
for the right to build a canal every foot of which would be on the
territory of the Province of Panama. If Panama was a sovereign state
instead of merely a province, all this money would be used for the
benefit of but 400,000 people, including Indians and negroes, who of
course could not be expected to have much to say about its use. If
employed in public works, it would only have to spread over about 32,000
square miles, or a territory a little smaller than Indiana. But of
course it would chiefly go to the two cities. On the other hand if
Colombia made this treaty the capital city Bogotá would get the lion’s
share of the spoil, and for that matter all the provinces would share in
the division with Panama, which had the goods for sale.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE BEST RESIDENCE SECTION, COLON]
What more natural than that the Panamanians should turn their thoughts
toward secession from Colombia? It was no novel channel for their
meditations, for, as has been pointed out already, there had been 53
revolutions in Colombia in 57 years. Red revolution had become a
commonplace except for the poor fellows who got themselves killed in
them, or the widows and children thrown on the charity of a rather
uncharitable people. Always hitherto the result of the revolutions had
been the same--Panama had either been whipped into subjection, or had
voluntarily returned to the domination of Colombia. But that was before
there was a $10,000,000 prize at stake.
[Illustration: THE OLD FIRE CISTERN, PANAMA]
In several of these revolutions the United States had interfered, always
in behalf of Colombia and always with fatal effect upon the hopes of the
revolutionists. For the key to the military situation in Panama was the
railroad. In every well ordered revolution--for the business of
revolting had become a science--the conspirators began by corrupting the
federal soldiers at Panama City where alone any garrison was maintained.
This done they proclaimed Panama a free and independent state. As there
was no land communication between Bogotá and the Isthmus the federal
government was compelled to send its troops to Colon and thence across
the Isthmus to Panama by railroad. If the revolutionists could destroy
or obstruct the railroad their chances for success would be greatly
enhanced.
But under a treaty with Colombia in 1846 the United States guaranteed
the neutrality of the railroad and this guarantee was sensibly
constructed to include the task of keeping the line open for traffic. In
several revolutions, therefore, United States marines were detailed to
guard the line, and Colombia being thus enabled to pour its superior
forces into Panama crushed out rebellion with comparative ease. If the
experience of the 53 revolutions counted for anything, it indicated that
Panama could not throw off the Colombian yoke as long as the United
States kept the railroad open for Colombian troops.
Let us consider the situation toward the midsummer of 1903. In
Washington was the Roosevelt administration keenly eager to have the
canal work begun as a great deed to display to the nation in the coming
presidential campaign. In New York was Mr. William Nelson Cromwell,
representing the French company and quite as keen for action which would
enable him to sell the United States $40,000,000 worth of French
machinery and uncompleted canal. At Bogotá was the Colombian legislature
talking the Hay-Herrara treaty to death and giving every indication of a
purpose of killing it. Spanning the Isthmus was the all important
railroad which was part of the property the French so greatly desired to
sell. And at Panama and Colon were groups of influential men, high
financiers in a small way--a leader among them was the owner of the
Panama lottery--exceedingly anxious to have the handling of that
$10,000,000 which the United States would pay for a franchise, and quite
desirous to have the country tributary to those two towns suddenly
populated by 40,000 to 50,000 canal workmen, all drawing money from the
United States and spending it there.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT
ANCON HILL FROM HARBOR OF PANAMA
The town nestles under the northeast side of the hill which is
precipitous and cuts of the sun’s rays early in the afternoon. From the
crest the most beautiful view in Panama may be enjoyed.]
What happened was inevitable. Under the conditions existing only two
things could have prevented the successful revolution which did
occur--the quick ratification of a satisfactory treaty between the
United States and Colombia, or an observance by the United States of the
spirit as well as the letter of neutrality in the inevitable revolution.
Neither of these things happened. The Congress at Bogotá failed to
ratify the treaty. In Panama and Colon the revolutionary Junta
conspired, and sent emissaries to Washington to sound the government
there on its attitude in case of a revolution. To their aid came Mr.
Cromwell and M. Bunau-Varilla, a highly distinguished French engineer
also interested in the plight of his countrymen. Dr. Amador was chosen
to sound the then Secretary of State John Hay. He was told, according to
trustworthy reports, that while the United States guaranteed Colombia
against foreign aggression it did not bind itself to protect the
sovereignty of that state against domestic revolution. In the event of
such an uprising all it was bound to do was to see that traffic over the
railroad was unimpeded. This sounded and still sounds fair enough, but
there were minds among the revolutionists to see that this policy opened
the way for a successful revolution at last.
For this is the way in which the policy worked when put to the test--and
indeed some of the incidents indicate that the Roosevelt administration
went somewhat beyond the letter of the rule Secretary Hay had laid down.
Our government knew before the revolutionary blow was struck that it
was imminent. It is said indeed that when the revolutionists suggested
September 22nd as the date for the spontaneous uprising of the people
the Secretary sagaciously suggested that the Congress of Colombia would
not then have adjourned and that it might seem irregular to base a
revolution on the omission of the legislature to act when it was still
in session and could correct that omission. For this, or some other
reason, the revolution was postponed until November 5th. The Colombian
minister at Washington kept his government advised of the suspicious
activity there of the agents of the Junta and warmly advised the heavy
reënforcement of the garrison at Panama. But his home government was
slow to follow his advice. When it did move it was checked by the French
managers of the railroad.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE TWO PRESIDENTS; ROOSEVELT AND AMADOR]
Colombia’s only considerable seaport on the Pacific is Buenaventura and
at this point troops were collected to reënforce Panama. Two Colombian
gunboats in harbor at Panama were ordered to go after the troops. Coal
was needed for the voyage. The only source of coal supplies on the
Isthmus was the Panama Railroad which had long made a practice of
selling the fuel to all comers. But to the request of the Colombian navy
for coal at this time the railroad agent, evidently primed for the
occasion, put in a reluctant negative. All his coal was at Colon, and
the pressure of commercial business was so great that he could not move
it across the Isthmus in season to be of use to the gunboats. So those
troops stayed at Buenaventura and the Junta at Panama went on with its
plotting.
Now Colombia tried another plan to reënforce its Panama garrison--or to
replace it, for by this time the troops that had been there were won
over to the smoldering conspiracy. About four hundred soldiers were sent
down by the Gulf and landed at Colon. That they were landed at all seems
like a slight error in carrying out the Roosevelt policy, for in the
harbor of Colon lay the United States cruiser “Nashville” and gunboat
“Dixie” whose commanders had this despatch from the Secretary of the
Navy:
“Maintain free and uninterrupted transit. If interruption is
threatened by armed force occupy line of railroad. Prevent landing of
any armed force with hostile intent either government or insurgent,
either at Colon, Porto Bello or other points.”
Now there are some curious features about this despatch. On November
2nd, its date, there was no insurrection, therefore no insurgents. If
the administration intended to take official cognizance of the
activities of the Junta it must have known that the conspirators had no
ships and could not therefore plan landing any forces. The order then
was plainly designed to prevent Colombia from landing troops in its own
territory--a most extraordinary policy to adopt toward a friendly
nation. It was furthermore an order equivalent to assuring the success
of the foreshadowed revolution, for as there was no way except by sea
for Colombia to send troops to put down the insurgents, it was evident
that for the United States by its superior force to close the sea
against her was to give Panama over to the revolutionists.
[Illustration: CHOLO CHIEF AND HIS THIRD WIFE
The Chief is said to have poisoned her two predecessors]
However 400 troops were landed on the 3rd of November. The commander of
the “Nashville” probably thought his orders only operative in case of an
outbreak of insurrection and thus far there had been none. It became
time for the railroad company to declare its second check--which in this
case was checkmate. When the two generals in command of the Colombian
forces ordered special trains to transport their men to Panama the agent
blandly asked for prepayment of the fares--something above $2000. The
generals were embarrassed. They had no funds. It was of course the
business of the road, under its charter from Colombia, to transport the
troops on demand, and it was the part of the generals to use their
troops to compel it to do so. Taking the matter under advisement they
went alone across to Panama to investigate the situation. There they
were met by Gen. Huertas, in command of the garrison who first gave them
a good dinner and then put them under arrest informing them that Panama
had revolted, was now an independent republic, and that he was part of
the new régime. There was no more to it in Panama. The two generals
submitted gracefully. The Junta arrested all the Colombian officials in
Panama, who thereupon readily took oath of fealty to the new government.
A street mob, mainly boys, paraded cheering for Panama Libre. The Panama
flag sprang into being, and the revolution was complete.
[Illustration: _Photo by Prof. Lutz_
NATIVE HOUSE AND GROUP AT PUERTA PINAS]
[Illustration: WHAT THEY CALL A STREET IN TOBAGA]
Out in the harbor lay three Colombian gunboats. Two swiftly displayed
Panama flags which by singular good fortune were in their lockers. The
third with a fine show of loyalty fired two shells over the insurgent
city, one of which, bursting, slew an innocent Chinaman smoking opium in
his bunk. The city responded with an ineffective shot or two from the
seawall and the sole defender of the sovereignty of Colombia pulled down
its flag.
At the other end of the line the situation was more serious and might
well have caused bloodshed. Col. Torres, in charge of the troops there,
on hearing the news from Panama demanded a train at once, threatening
that unless it was furnished he would attack the Americans in the town.
He had more than 400 armed men, while on the “Nashville” were but 192
marines. In such a contest the Colombians could have relied upon much
assistance from the natives. With a guard of 42 marines employees of the
railroad prepared its stone freight house for defense while American
women and children were sent to vessels in the harbor. The Colombian
colonel had fixed two o’clock as the hour for beginning hostilities but
when that time arrived he invited a conference, and it was finally
agreed that both parties should retire from Colon, while he went to
Panama to consult with the jailed generals. During his absence the
“Dixie” arrived with 400 marines, and a little later the “Atlanta” with
1000. With this overwhelming force against him Col. Torres recognized
that the United States was back of the railroad’s refusal of
transportation and so yielded. With his troops he sailed again for
Cartagena.
[Illustration: HINDOO MERCHANTS ON THE ZONE]
Two days after the revolution--bloodless save for the sleeping
Chinaman--the United States recognized the Republic of Panama. Twelve
days later, with M. Bunau-Varilla who had by cable been appointed
minister to Washington, a treaty was concluded by which the United
States was granted all it desired for the furtherance of the canal
project. Much of the subsequent time of President Roosevelt was taken up
in arguing that he had not gone beyond the proper bounds of diplomacy in
getting this advantage, but the world though accepting the result has
ever been incredulous of his protestations of good faith. And the end is
not yet. Colombia has not condoned the part taken by the United States,
and the State Department has long been endeavoring to discover some way,
not too mortifying to our national self-esteem, by which we may allay
Colombia’s discontent. And as for that nation it has persistently
refused to recognize Panama as independent, one of the results of which
has been that the perpetrators of crime on the Isthmus may skip blithely
over the line to Bogotá or Cartagena and enjoy life free from dread of
extradition.
[Illustration: CHAME BEACH, PACIFIC COAST
Where sand is obtained for locks on the Pacific division]
Briefly summarized the terms of the treaty thus expeditiously secured
are:
1. The guaranty of the independence of the Republic of Panama.
2. The grant to the United States of a strip of land from ocean to
ocean, extending for five miles on each side of the canal, to be called
the Canal Zone and over which the United States has absolute
jurisdiction. From this Zone the cities of Panama and Colon are
explicitly excluded.
3. All railway and canal rights in the Zone are ceded to the United
States and its property therein is exempted from taxation.
4. The United States has the right to police, garrison and fortify the
Zone.
5. The United States is granted sanitary jurisdiction over the cities of
Panama and Colon, and is vested with the right to preserve order in the
Republic, should the Panamanian government in the judgment of the United
States fail to do so.
6. As a condition of the treaty the United States paid to Panama
$10,000,000 in cash, and in 1913 began the annual payment of $250,000 in
perpetuity.
Thus equipped with all necessary international authority for the work of
building the canal President Roosevelt plunged with equal vehemence and
audacity into the actual constructive work. If he strained to the
breaking point the rights of a friendly nation to get his treaty, he
afterwards tested even further the elasticity of the power of a
President to act without Congressional authority.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
FRENCH DRY DOCK, CRISTOBAL]
We may hastily pass over the steps forward. Mr. Cromwell was paid the
$40,000,000 for the French stockholders, and at once there arose a
prodigious outcry that the Frenchmen got but little out of it; that
their stock had been bought for a few cents on the dollar by speculative
Americans; that these Americans had financed the “revolution” and that
some of the stock was held by persons very close to the administration.
None of these charges was proved, but all left a rather bad impression
on the public mind. However the United States received full value for
the money. April 28, 1904, Congress appropriated the $10,000,000 due
Panama, and with the title thus clear Lieutenant Mark Brooke, U. S. A.,
at 7:30 A. M. May 4th, formally took over the territory in the name of
the United States. An excellent opportunity for pomp and ceremony, for
fuss and feathers was thus wasted. There were neither speeches, nor
thundering salutes and the hour was obviously unpropitious for
champagne. “They order these things better in France,” as “Uncle Toby”
was wont to say.
[Illustration: WHAT THE WORK EXPENDED ON THE CANAL MIGHT HAVE DONE
Build a Chinese wall from San Francisco to New York, or dig a ditch 10
feet deep and 55 feet wide across the United States at its widest part]
When little more than a decade shall have rolled away after that wasted
ceremonial moment the visitor to the Isthmus will gaze upon the greatest
completed public work of this or any other past age. To conceive of some
task that man may accomplish in future that will exceed in magnitude
this one is in itself a tax upon the most vivid imagination. To what
great work of the past can we compare this one of the present?
[Illustration: _Courtesy Scientific American_
A GRAPHIC COMPARISON
The “spoil” taken from the canal would build 63 pyramids the size of
Cheops in Broadway from the Battery to Harlem]
The great Chinese wall has been celebrated in all history as one of
man’s most gigantic efforts. It is 1500 miles long and would reach from
San Francisco to St. Louis. But the rock and dirt taken from the Panama
Canal would build a wall as high and thick as the Chinese wonder, 2500
miles long and reach from San Francisco to New York in a bee-line.
[Illustration: WHAT THE PANAMA CONCRETE WOULD DO]
We cross thousands of miles of ocean to see the great Pyramid of Cheops,
one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. But the “spoil” taken
from the canal prism would build sixty-three such pyramids which put in
a row would fill Broadway from the Battery to Harlem, or a distance of
nine miles.
The Panama Canal is but fifty miles long, but if we could imagine the
United States as perfectly level, the amount of excavation done at
Panama would dig a canal ten feet deep and fifty-five feet wide across
the United States at its broadest part.
New York City boasts of its great Pennsylvania terminal, and its
sky-piercing Woolworth Building; Washington is proud of its towering
Washington Monument, the White House and the buildings adjacent thereto.
But the concrete used in the locks and dams of the canal would make a
pyramid 400 feet high, covering the great railway station; the material
taken from Culebra cut alone would make a pyramid topping the Woolworth
tower by 100 feet, and covering the city from Chambers to Fulton Street,
and from the City Hall to West Broadway; while the total soil excavated
in the Canal Zone would form a pyramid 4200 feet or four fifths of a
mile high, and of equal base line obliterating not only the Washington
Monument but the White House, Treasury, the State, War and Navy
Buildings and the finest part of official Washington as well.
Jules Verne once, in imagination, drove a tunnel through the center of
the earth, but the little cylindrical tubes drilled for the dynamite
cartridges on “the line” (as people at Panama refer to the Canal Zone)
would, if placed end to end, pierce this great globe of ours from side
to side; while the dirt cars that have carried off the material would,
if made up in one train, reach four times around the world.
[Illustration: _Courtesy Scientific American_
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.
[Illustration: _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.
[Illustration: _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.
Probably the first thing the observant passenger will notice is that as
the ship steams into the open lock the great gates which are to close
behind her and hold the water which flows in from below, slowly lifting
her to the lock above, are folded flush with the wall, a recess having
been built to receive them. The chamber which the vessel has entered is
1000 feet long, if the full water capacity be employed, 110 feet wide
and will raise the ship 28¹⁄₃ feet. If the ship is a comparatively small
one the full length of the lock will not be used, as intermediate gates
are provided which will permit the use of 400 or 600 feet of the lock as
required--thus saving water, which means saving power, for the water
that raises and lowers the ships also generates electric power which
will be employed in several ways.
Back of each pair of gates is a second pair of emergency gates folded
back flush with the wall and only to be used in case of injury to the
first pair. On the floor of the canal at the entrance to the lock lies a
great chain, attached to machinery which, at the first sign of a ship’s
becoming unmanageable, will raise it and bar the passage. Nearly all
serious accidents which have occurred to locks have been due to vessels
of which control has been lost, by some error in telegraphing from the
bridge to the engine room. For this reason at Panama vessels once in the
locks will be controlled wholly by the four locomotives on the lock
walls which can check its momentum at the slightest sign of danger.
Their own engines will be shut down. Finally at the upper entrance to
the locks is an emergency dam built on the guide wall. It is evident
that if an accident should happen to the gates of the upper lock the
water on the upper level would rush with destructive force against the
lower ones, perhaps sweeping away one after the other and wrecking the
canal disastrously. To avert this the emergency dams are swung on a
pivot, something like a drawbridge, athwart the lock and great plates
let down one after the other, stayed by the perpendicular steel
framework until the rush of the waters is checked. A caisson is then
sunk against these plates, making the dam complete.
The method of construction and operation of these locks will be more
fully described in a later chapter. What has been outlined here can be
fully observed, by the voyager in transit. The machinery by which all is
operated is concealed in the masonry crypts below, but the traveler may
find cheer and certainty of safety in the assurance of the engineer who
took me through the cavernous passages--“It’s all made fool proof”.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
LOCK AT PEDRO MIGUEL UNDER CONSTRUCTION
The picture shows strikingly the construction of the locks in pairs, the
inner pair being for precautionary purposes]
[Illustration: RANGE TOWER AT PACIFIC ENTRANCE]
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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: _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.
In passing through the lake the canal describes eight angles, and the
attentive traveler will find interest in watching the range lights by
which the ship is guided when navigating the channel by day or by
night--for there need be no cessation of passage because of darkness.
These range lights are lighthouses of reënforced concrete so placed in
pairs that one towers above the other at a distance back of the lower
one of several hundred feet. The pilot keeping these two in line will
know he is keeping to the center of his channel until the appearance of
two others on either port or starboard bow warns him that the time has
come to turn. The towers are of graceful design, and to come upon one
springing sixty feet or more into the air from a dense jungle clustering
about its very base is to have a new experience in the picturesque. They
will need no resident light keepers, for most are on a general electric
light circuit. Some of the more inaccessible however are stocked with
compressed acetylene which will burn over six months without recharging.
The whole canal indeed from its beginning miles out in the Atlantic to
its end under the blue Pacific will be lighted with buoys, beacons,
lighthouses and light posts along the locks until its course is almost
as easily followed as a “great white way.”
Sportsmen believe that this great artificial lake will in time become a
notable breeding place for fish and game. Many of our migratory northern
birds, including several varieties of ducks, now hibernate at the
Isthmus, and this broad expanse of placid water, with its innumerable
inlets penetrating a land densely covered with vegetation, should become
for them a favorite shelter. The population will be sparse, and mainly
as much as five miles away from the line of the canal through which the
great steamers will ceaselessly pass.
[Illustration: NATIVE STREET AT TABOGA]
During the period of its construction that portion of the canal which
will lie below the surface of Gatun Lake was plentifully sprinkled with
native villages, and held two or three considerable construction towns.
Of the latter Gorgona was the largest, which toward the end of canal
construction attained a population of about 4000. In the earlier history
of the Isthmus Gorgona was a noted stopping place for those crossing the
neck, but it seems to have been famed chiefly for the badness of its
accommodations. Otis says of it, “The town of Gorgona was noted in the
earlier days of the river travel as the place where the wet and jaded
traveler was accustomed to worry out the night on a rawhide, exposed to
the insects and the rain, and in the morning, if he was fortunate regale
himself on jerked beef and plantains.”
The French established railroad shops here which the Americans greatly
enlarged. As a result this town and the neighboring village of Matachin
became considerable centers of industry and Gorgona was one of the
pleasantest places of residence on “the line.” Its Y. M. C. A. clubhouse
was one of the largest and best equipped on the whole Zone, and the town
was well supplied with churches and schools. By the end of 1913 all this
will be changed. The shop will have been moved to the great new port of
Balboa; such of the houses and official buildings as could economically
be torn down and reërected will have been thus disposed of. Much of the
two towns will be covered by the lake, but on the higher portions of the
site will stand for some years deserted ruins which the all-conquering
jungle will finally take for its own. The railroad which once served its
active people will have been moved away to the other side of the canal
and Gorgona will have returned to the primitive wilderness whence
Pizarro and the gold hunters awakened it. Near its site is the hill
miscalled Balboa’s and from the steamships’ decks the wooden cross that
stands on its summit may be clearly seen.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
GAMBOA BRIDGE WITH CHAGRES AT FLOOD
For contrasting picture showing the river in dry season, see page 192]
Soon after passing Gorgona and Matachin the high bridge by which the
railroad crosses the Chagres at Gamboa, with its seven stone piers will
be visible over the starboard side. This point is of some interest as
being the spot at which the water was kept out of the long trench at
Culebra. A dyke, partly artificial, here obstructed the canal cut and
carried the railroad across to Las Cascadas, Empire, Culebra and other
considerable towns all abandoned, together with that branch of the road,
upon the completion of the canal.
[Illustration: THE Y. M. C. A. CLUB HOUSE AT GATUN]
Now the ship passes into the most spectacular part of the voyage--the
Culebra Cut. During the process of construction this stretch of the work
vied with the great dam at Gatun for the distinction of being the most
interesting and picturesque part of the work. Something of the
spectacular effect then presented will be lost when the ships begin to
pass. The sense of the magnitude of the work will not so greatly impress
the traveler standing on the deck of a ship, floating on the surface of
the canal which is here 45 feet deep, as it would were he standing at
the bottom of the cut. He will lose about 75 feet of the actual height,
as commanded by the earlier traveler who looked up at the towering
height of Contractors Hill from the very floor of the colossal
excavation. He will lose, too, much of the almost barbaric coloring of
the newly opened cut where bright red vied with chrome yellow in
startling the eye, and almost every shade of the chromatic scale had its
representative in the freshly uncovered strata of earth.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
WORKING IN CULEBRA CUT
The picture is taken at a comparatively quiet time, only two dirt trains
being visible]
The tropical foliage grows swiftly, and long before the new waterway
will have become an accustomed path to the ships of all nations the
sloping banks will be thickly covered with vegetation. It is indeed the
purpose of the Commission to encourage the growth of such vegetation by
planting, in the belief that the roots will tie the soil together and
lessen the danger of slides and washouts. The hills that here tower
aloft on either side of the canal form part of the great continental
divide that, all the way from Alaska to the Straits of Magellan divides
the Pacific from the Atlantic watershed. This is its lowest point. Gold
Hill, its greatest eminence, rises 495 feet above the bottom of the
canal, which in turn is 40 feet above sea level. The story of the
gigantic task of cutting through this ridge, of the new problems which
arose in almost every week’s work, and of the ways in which they were
met and overcome will necessitate a chapter to itself. Those who float
swiftly along in well-appointed steamships through the almost straight
channel 300 feet wide at the bottom, between towering hills, will find
the sensation the more memorable if they will study somewhat the figures
showing the proportions of the work, the full fruition of which they are
enjoying.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
MIRAFLORES LOCK IN MARCH, 1913
This lock is in two stories with a total lift of 56²⁄₃ feet; the Pacific
tides rise in the canal to the lower lock]
At Pedro Miguel a single lock lets the ship down to another little lake
hardly two miles across to Miraflores where two more locks drop it down
to tide water. From Miraflores the traveler can see the great bulk of
Ancon Hill looming up seven miles away, denoting the proximity of the
city of Panama which lies huddled under its Pacific front. Practically
one great rock is Ancon Hill, and its landward face is badly scarred by
the enormous quarry which the Commission has worked to furnish stone for
construction work. At its base is the new port of Balboa which is
destined to be in time a great distributing point for the Pacific coast
of both North and South America. For the vessels coming through the
canal from the Atlantic must, from Balboa, turn north or south or
proceed direct across the Pacific to those Asiatic markets of which the
old-time mariners so fondly dreamed. Fleets of smaller coastwise vessels
will gather here to take cargoes for the ports of Central America, or
for Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and other Pacific states of South America.
The Canal Commission is building great docks for the accommodation of
both through and local shipping; storage docks and pockets for coal and
tanks for oil. The coaling plant will have a capacity of about 100,000
tons, of which about one-half will be submerged. One dry dock will take
a ship 1000 feet long and 105 feet wide--the width of the dock itself
being 110 feet. There will be also a smaller dock. One pier, of the most
modern design, equipped with unloading cranes and 2200 feet long is
already complete, and the plans for additional piers are prepared. The
estimated cost of the terminals at Balboa is $15,000,000.
[Illustration: NAOS, PERICO AND FLAMENCO ISLANDS TO BE FORTIFIED]
The Suez Canal created no town such as Balboa is likely to be, for
conditions with it were wholly different. Port Said at the Mediterranean
end and Aden at the Red Sea terminus are coaling stations, nothing more.
Geographical considerations however are likely to give to both Balboa
and Cristobal--particularly the former--prime importance as points of
transshipment.
[Illustration: BEGINNING OF NEW BALBOA DOCKS]
The machine shops long in Gorgona and Matachin have been removed to
Balboa, and though since the completion of the canal the number of their
employes has been greatly decreased, the work of repairing and
outfitting vessels may be expected to maintain a large population of
mechanics. The administration offices now at Culebra will also be moved
to Balboa, which in fact is likely to become the chief town of the Canal
Zone. Here is to be an employes’ club house, built of concrete blocks at
a cost of $52,000. Like the other club houses established during the
construction period it will be under the direct administration of the Y.
M. C. A. The town of Balboa, and the club house will be in no small
degree the fruit of the earnest endeavor of Col. Goethals to build there
a town that shall be a credit to the nation, and a place of comfort for
those who inhabit it. His estimate presented to Congress of the cost and
character of the houses to be furnished to officers of various grades
and certain public buildings may be interesting here. The material is
all to be concrete blocks:
Governor’s house $25,000
Commissioners’ and high officials’ houses, each 15,000
Houses of this type to have large center room, a sitting
room, dining room, bath, kitchen and four bed rooms.
Families drawing $200 a month 6,000
Families drawing less, in 4-family buildings 4,000
Bachelor quarters, for 50 50,000
Besides these buildings for personal occupance Balboa will
contain--unless the original plans are materially modified:
Hotel $22,500
Commissary 63,000
School 32,000
Police station and court 37,000
[Illustration: THE OLD PACIFIC MAIL DOCKS AT BALBOA]
When Col. Goethals was presenting his estimates to Congress in 1913 the
members of the Committee on Appropriations looked somewhat askance on
the club-house feature of his requests, and this colloquy occurred:
“The Chairman: ‘A $52,000 club house?’
“Col. Goethals: ‘Yes, sir. We need a good club house, because we
should give them some amusement, and keep them out of Panama. I
believe in the club-house principle.’
“The Chairman: ‘That is all right, but you must contemplate a very
elaborate house?’
“Col. Goethals: ‘Yes, sir. I want to make a town there that will be a
credit to the United States government.’”
Looking out to sea from the prow of a ship entering the Pacific Ocean
you will notice three conical islands rising abruptly from the waves,
to a height of three or four hundred feet. To be more precise the one
nearest the shore ceased to be an island when the busy dirt trains of
the Canal Commission dumped into the sea some millions of cubic yards of
material taken from the Culebra Cut, forming at once a great area of
artificial land which may in ensuing centuries have its value, and a
breakwater which intercepts a local current that for a time gave the
canal builders much trouble by filling the channel with silt. The three
islands, Naos, Flamenco, and Perico are utilized by the United States as
sites for powerful forts. The policy of the War Department necessarily
prevents any description here of the forts planned or their armament.
Every government jealously guards from the merely curious a view of its
defensive works, and the intruder with a camera, however harmless and
inoffensive he may be, is severely dealt with as though he had profaned
the Holy of Holies. Despite these drastic precautions against the
harmless tourist it is a recognized fact that every government has in
its files plans and descriptions of the forts of any power with which it
is at all likely to become involved in war.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE PACIFIC GATEWAY
The gun points to canal entrance; high hills in the background are
beyond the canal]
It may be said, however, without entering into prohibited details, that
by the fortifications on the islands, and on the hills adjacent to the
canal entrance, as well as by a permanent system of submarine mines the
Pacific entrance to the canal is made as nearly impregnable as the art
of war permits. The locks at Miraflores are seven miles inland and the
effective range of naval guns is fourteen miles, so that but for the
fortifications and a fleet of our own to hold the hostile fleet well out
to sea the very keystone of the canal structure would be menaced. Our
government in building its new terminal city at Balboa had before it a
very striking illustration of the way in which nations covet just such
towns. Russia on completing her trans-Siberian railroad built at Port
Arthur a terminal even grander and more costly than our new outpost on
the Pacific. But the Japanese flag now waves over Port Arthur--and
incidentally the fortifications of that famous terminal were also
considered impregnable. Perhaps the impregnable fort like the unsinkable
ship is yet to be found.
At Balboa the trip through the completed canal will be ended. It has
covered a fraction over fifty miles, and has consumed, according to the
speed of the ship and the “smartness” of her handling in locks, from
seven to ten hours. He who was fortunate enough to make that voyage may
well reflect on the weeks of time and the thousands of tons of coal
necessary to carry his vessel from Colon to Balboa had the canal not
existed.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
COMPLETED CANAL AT COROZAL]
From Balboa to the ancient and yet gay city of Panama runs a trolley
line by which the passenger, whose ship remains in port for a few days,
or even a few hours, may with but little cost of time or money visit one
of the quaintest towns on the North American continent. If the climate,
or the seemingly ineradicable sluggishness of the Panamanian do not
intervene the two towns should grow into one, though their governments
must remain distinct, as the Republic of Panama naturally clings to its
capital city. But seemingly the prospect of a great new port at his
doors, open to the commerce of all the world, where ships from Hamburg
and Hong Kong, from London and Lima, from Copenhagen and from Melbourne
may all meet in passing their world-wide ways, excites the Panamanian
not a whit. He exists content with his town as it is, reaching out but
little for the new trade which this busy mart next door to him should
bring. No new hotels are rising within the line of the old walls; no new
air of haste or enterprise enlivens the placid streets and plazas.
Perhaps in time Balboa may be the big town, and Panama as much outworn
as that other Panama which Morgan left a mere group of ruins. It were a
pity should it be so, for no new town, built of neat cement blocks, with
a Y. M. C. A. club house as its crowning point of gaiety, can ever have
the charm which even the casual visitor finds in ragged, bright-colored,
crowded, gay and perhaps naughty Panama.
CHAPTER VIII
THE FORMATIVE PERIOD
American control of the canal, as I have already pointed out, was taken
over without any particular ceremony immediately after the payment to
Panama of the $10,000,000 provided for in the treaty. Indeed so slight
was the friction incident to the transfer of ownership from the French
to the Americans that several hundred laborers employed on the Culebra
Cut went on with their work serenely unconscious of any change in
management. But though work was uninterrupted the organization of the
directing force took time and thought. It took more than that. It
demanded the testing out of men in high place and the rejection of the
unfit; patient experimenting with methods and the abandonment of those
that failed to produce results. There was a long period of this
experimental work which sorely tried the patience of the American people
before the canal-digging organization fell into its stride and moved on
with a certain and resistless progress toward the goal.
In accordance with the Spooner act President Roosevelt on March 8, 1904,
appointed the first Isthmian Canal Commission with the following
personnel:
Admiral John G. Walker, U. S. N., _Chairman_,
Major General George W. Davis, U. S. A.,
William Barclay Parsons,
William H. Burr,
Benjamin M. Harrod,
Carl Ewald Gunsky,
Frank J. Hecker.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
TUNNEL FOR THE OBISPO DIVERSION CANAL]
In 1913 when the canal approached completion not one of these gentlemen
was associated with it. Death had carried away Admiral Walker, but
official mortality had ended the canal-digging careers of the others.
Indeed under the rule of President Roosevelt the tenure of office of
Isthmian Commissioners was exceedingly slender and the whole commission
as originally designed was finally abolished being replaced by one made
up, with one exception, of officers of the army and navy. The first
commission visited the Isthmus, stayed precisely 24 days, ordered some
new surveys and returned to the United States. The most important fact
about its visit was that it was accompanied to the scene of work by an
army surgeon, one Dr. W. C. Gorgas, who had been engaged in cleaning up
Havana. Major Gorgas, to give him his army title, was not at this time a
member of the Commission but had been appointed Chief Sanitary Officer.
I shall have much to say of his work in a later chapter; as for that
matter Fame will have much to say of him in later ages. Col. Goethals,
who will share that pinnacle was not at this time associated with the
canal work. Coincidently with the Commission’s visit the President
appointed as chief engineer, John F. Wallace, at the moment general
manager of the Illinois Central Railroad. His salary was fixed at
$25,000 a year.
In telling the story of the digging of the Panama Canal we shall find
throughout that the engineer outshines the Commission; the executive
rather than the legislative is the ruling force. The story therefore
groups itself into three chapters of very unequal length--namely the
administrations as chief engineers of John F. Wallace, from June 1,
1904, to June 28, 1905; John F. Stevens, June 30, 1905, to April 1,
1907, and Col. George W. Goethals from April 1, 1907, to the time of
publication of this book and doubtless for a very considerable period
thereafter.
Each of these officials encountered new problems, serious obstacles,
heartbreaking delays and disappointments. Two broke down under the
strain; doubtless the one who took up the work last profited by both the
errors and the successes of his predecessors. It is but human nature to
give the highest applause to him who is in at the death, to immortalize
the soldier who plants the flag on the citadel, forgetting him who fell
making a breach in the outer breastworks and thereby made possible the
ultimate triumph.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE TWO COLONELS
W. C. Gorgas and George W. Goethals, whose combined work gave the canal
to the world.]
Wallace at the very outset had to overcome one grim and unrelenting
enemy which was largely subdued before his successors took up the work.
Yellow fever and malaria ravaged the Isthmus, as they had done from time
immemorial, and although Sanitary Officer Gorgas was there with
knowledge of how to put that foe to rout the campaign was yet to be
begun. They say that Wallace had a lurking dread that before he could
finish the canal the canal would finish him, and indeed he had sound
reasons for that fear. He found the headquarters of the chief engineer
in the building on Avenida Centrale now occupied by the United States
legation, but prior to his time tenanted by the French Director-General.
The streets of the town were unpaved, ankle deep in foul mire in the
rainy season, and covered with germ-laden dust when dry. There being no
sewers the townsfolk with airy indifference to public health emptied
their slops from the second-story windows feeling they had made
sufficient concession to the general welfare if they warned passersby
before tilting the bucket. Yellow fever was always present in isolated
cases, and by the time Wallace had been on the job a few months it
became epidemic, and among the victims was the wife of his secretary.
[Illustration: A WALK AT ANCON]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: IN THE HOSPITAL GROUNDS]
However, the new chief engineer tackled the job with energy. There was
quite enough to enlist his best energies. It must be remembered that at
this date the fundamental problem of a sea level _vs._ a lock canal had
not been determined--was not definitely settled indeed until 1906.
Accordingly Engineer Wallace’s first work was getting ready to work. He
found 746 men tickling the surface of Culebra Cut with hand tools; the
old French houses, all there were for the new force had been seized upon
by natives or overrun by the jungle; while the French had left great
quantities of serviceable machinery it had been abandoned in the open
and required careful overhauling before being fit for use; the railroad
was inadequate in track mileage and in equipment. Above all the labor
problem was yet to be successfully solved. In his one year’s service
Wallace repaired 357 French houses and built 48 new ones, but the task
of housing the employees was still far from completed. Men swarmed over
the old French machinery, cutting away the jungle, dousing the metal
with kerosene and cleaning off the rust. Floating dredges were set to
work in the channel at the Atlantic end--which incidentally has been
abandoned in the completed plans for the canal though it was used in
preliminary construction. The railroad was reëquipped and extended and
the foundation laid for the thoroughly up-to-date road it now is.
Meanwhile the surveying parties were busy in the field collecting the
data from which after a prolonged period of discussion, the vexed
question of the type of canal, should be determined.
Two factors in the situation made Wallace’s job the hardest. The
Commission made its headquarters in Washington, 2000 miles or a week’s
journey away from the job, and the American people, eager for action,
were making the air resound with cries of “make the dirt fly!” In a
sense Wallace’s position was not unlike that of Gen. McClellan in the
opening months of the Civil War when the slogan of the northern press
was “On to Richmond,” and no thought was given to the obstacles in the
path, or the wisdom of preparing fully for the campaign before it was
begun. There are many who hold today that if Wallace had been deaf to
those who wanted to see the dirt fly, had taken the men off the work of
excavation until the type of canal had been determined and all necessary
housing and sanitation work had been completed, the results attained
would have been better, and the strain which broke down this really
capable engineer would have been averted.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
FRENCH COTTAGES ON THE WATER FRONT, CRISTOBAL]
Red tape immeasurable wound about the Chief Engineer and all his
assistants. Requisitions had to go to the Commission for approval and
the Commission clung to Washington tenaciously, as all federal
commissions do wherever the work they are commissioned to perform may be
situated. During the Civil War days a story was current of a Major being
examined for promotion to a colonelcy.
“Now, Major,” asked an examiner, “we will consider, if you please, the
case of a regiment just ordered into battle. What is the usual position
of the colonel in such a case?”
“On Pennsylvania Avenue, about Willard’s Hotel,” responded the Major
bravely and truthfully.
The officers who directed Wallace’s fighting force clung to Pennsylvania
Avenue and its asphalt rather than abide with Avenidà Centrale and its
mud. So too did succeeding commissions until Theodore Roosevelt, who had
a personal penchant for being on the firing line, ordered that all
members of the Commission should reside on the Isthmus. At that he had
trouble enforcing the order except with the Army and Navy officers who
made up five-sevenths of the Commission.
How great was the delay caused by red tape and absentee authorities
cannot be estimated. When requisitions for supplies reached Washington
the regulations required that bids be advertised for. I rather discredit
the current story that when a young Panamanian arrived at Ancon Hospital
and the mother proved unable to furnish him with food, the doctor in
charge was officially notified that if he bought a nursing bottle
without advertising thirty days for bids he must do so at his own
expense. That story seems too strikingly illustrative of red-tape to be
true. But it is true that after Col. Gorgas had worked out his plans
for furnishing running water to Panama, and doing away with the cisterns
and great jars in which the residents stored water and bred mosquitoes,
it took nine months to get the iron pipes, ordinary ones at that, to
Panama. Meanwhile street paving and sewerage were held up and when
Wallace wired the Commission to hurry he was told to be less extravagant
in his use of the cable.
[Illustration: PAY DAY FOR THE BLACK LABOR]
No man suffered more from this sort of official delay and stupidity than
did Col. Gorgas. If any man was fighting for life it was he--not for his
own life but that of the thousands who were working, or yet to work on
the canal. Yet when he called for wire netting to screen out the
malarial mosquitos he was rebuked by the Commission as if he were asking
it merely to contribute to the luxury of the employees. The amount of
ingenuity expended by the Commission in suggesting ways in which wire
netting might be saved would be admirable as indicative of a desire to
guard the public purse, except for the fact that in saving netting they
were wasting human lives. The same policy was pursued when appeals came
in for additional equipment for the hospitals, for new machinery, for
wider authority. Whenever anything was to be done on the canal line the
first word from Washington was always criticism--the policy instantly
applied was delay.
Allowing for the disadvantages under which he labored Mr. Wallace
achieved great results in his year of service on the Isthmus. But his
connection with the canal was ended in a way about which must ever hang
some element of mystery. He complained bitterly, persistently and justly
about the conditions in which he was compelled to work and found in
President Roosevelt a sympathetic and a reasonable auditor. Indeed,
moved by the Chief Engineer’s appeals, the President endeavored to
secure from Congress authority to substitute a Commission of three for
the unwieldy body of seven with which Wallace found it so hard to make
headway. Failing in this the President characteristically enough did by
indirection what Congress would not permit him to do directly. He
demanded and received the resignations of all the original
commissioners, and appointed a new board with the following members:
Theodore P. Shonts, _Chairman_,
Charles E. Magoon, _Governor of the Canal Zone_,
John F. Wallace, _Chief Engineer_,
Mordecai T. Endicott,
Peter C. Hains,
Oswald H. Ernst,
Benjamin M. Harrod.
As in the case of the earlier commissioners none of these remained to
see the work to a conclusion.
This commission, though similar in form, was vastly different in fact
from its predecessor. The President in appointing it had directed that
its first three members should constitute an executive committee, and
that two of these, Gov. Magoon and Engineer Wallace, should reside
continuously on the Zone. To further concentrate power in Mr. Wallace’s
hands he was made Vice-President of the Panama Railroad. The President
thus secured practically all he had asked of Congress, for the executive
committee of three was as powerful as the smaller commission which
Congress had refused him. In all this organization Mr. Wallace had been
consulted at every step. He stayed for two months in Washington while
the changes were in progress and expressed his entire approval of them.
It was therefore with the utmost amazement that the President received
from him, shortly after his return to the Isthmus, a cable requesting a
new conference and hinting at his resignation.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
IN WALLACE’S TIME
Sanitation work in Panama City]
At the moment that cable message was sent Panama was shuddering in the
grasp of the last yellow fever epidemic that has devastated that
territory. Perhaps had Col. Gorgas secured his wire netting earlier, or
Wallace’s appeals for water pipes met with prompter attention it might
have been averted. But in that May and June of 1905 the fever ravaged
the town and the work camps almost as it had in the days of the French.
There had been, as already noted, some scattered cases of yellow fever
in the Zone when the Americans took hold, but they were too few and too
widely separated to cause any general panic. The sanitary authorities
however noted with apprehension that they did not decrease, and that a
very considerable proportion were fatal. It was about this time that the
Commission was snubbing Col. Gorgas because of his insatiable demands
for wire screening. In April there were seven cases among the employees
in the Commission’s headquarters in Panama. Three died and among the 300
other men employed there panic spread rapidly. Nobody cared about jobs
any longer. From all parts of the Zone white-faced men flocked to the
steamship offices to secure passage home. Stories about the ravages of
the disease among the French became current, and the men at work
shuddered as they passed the little French cemeteries so plentifully
scattered along the Zone.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT
THE WASHING PLACE AT TABOGA
Taboga, site of the Commission sanitarium, is the most picturesque point
readily accessible from Panama City. The laundry place is the gathering
point for the women of the village.]
The sanitary forces wheeled out into the open and went into the fight.
Every house in Panama and Colon was fumigated, against the bitter
protests of many of the householders who would rather face yellow fever
then the cleansing process, and who did not believe much in these
scientific ideas of the “gringoes” anyway. An army of inspectors made
house to house canvasses of the towns and removed, sometimes by force,
all suspected victims to the isolation hospitals. The malignant
mosquitoes, couriers of the infection, were pursued patiently by
regiments of men who slew all that were detected and deluged the
breeding places with larvacide. The war of science upon sickness soon
began to tell. June showed the high-water mark of pestilence with
sixty-two cases, and six deaths. From that point it declined until in
December the last case was registered. Since then there has been no case
of yellow fever originating on the Isthmus, and the few that have been
brought there have been so segregated that no infection has resulted.
[Illustration: THE FUMIGATION BRIGADE
When the members of this command finished with a district in Panama the
mosquito was done for]
It was, however, when the epidemic was at its height that Mr. Wallace
returned from Washington to the Isthmus. Almost immediately he cabled
asking to be recalled and the President, with a premonition of impending
trouble, so directed. On reaching New York he met the then Secretary of
War, afterwards President, William Howard Taft, to whom he expressed
dissatisfaction with the situation and asked to be relieved at the
earliest possible moment. Secretary Taft declined to consider his
further association with the canal, for a moment, demanded that his
resignation take effect at once and reproached him for abandoning the
work in words that stung, and which when reiterated in a letter and
published the next day put the retiring engineer in a most unenviable
position. From this position he never extricated himself. Perhaps the
fear of the fever, of which he thought he himself had a slight attack,
shook his nerve. Perhaps, as the uncharitable thought and the Secretary
flatly charged, a better position had offered itself just as he had
become morally bound to finish the canal work. Or perhaps he concluded
in the time he had for cool reflection on the voyage to Panama that the
remedies offered for the red tape, divided authority and delay that had
so handicapped him were inadequate. His communication to the press at
the time was unconvincing. The fairest course to pursue in the matter is
to accept Mr. Wallace’s own statement made to a congressional
investigating committee nearly a year later, in answer to a question as
to the cause of his resignation:
[Illustration: TYPICAL SCREENED HOUSES]
“My reason was, that I was made jointly responsible with Mr. Shonts and
Mr. Magoon for work on the canal, while Mr. Shonts had a verbal
agreement with the President that he should have a free rein in the
management of all matters. I felt Mr. Shonts was not as well qualified
as I was either as a business man or an administrator, and he was not an
engineer.... I thought it better to sacrifice my ambitions regarding
this work, which was to be the crowning event of my life, than remain to
be humiliated, forced to disobey orders, or create friction.”
[Illustration: A STREET AFTER PAVING
Before paving it was of the sort shown on page 39]
The Wallace resignation was at the moment most unfortunate. There had
for months been an almost concerted effort on the part of a large and
influential section of the press, and of men having the public ear to
decry the methods adopted at Panama, to criticize the men engaged in the
work and to magnify the obstacles to be overcome. Perhaps this chorus of
detraction was stimulated in part by advocates of the Nicaragua route
hoping to reopen that controversy. Probably the transcontinental
railroads, wanting no canal at all, had a great deal to do with it. At
any rate it was loud and insistent and the men on the Isthmus were
seriously affected by it. They knew by Mr. Wallace’s long absence that
some trouble was brewing in Washington. His sudden departure again after
his return from the capital and the rumor that he had determined to take
a more profitable place added to the unrest. Probably the rather severe
letter of dismissal with which Secretary Taft met the Chief Engineer’s
letter of resignation, and the instantaneous appointment in his place of
John F. Stevens, long associated with James J. Hill in railroad
building, at a salary $5000 a year greater, was the best tonic for the
tired feeling of those on the Isthmus. It indicated that the President
thought those who had accepted positions of command on the Canal Zone
had enlisted for the war, and that they could not desert in the face of
the enemy without a proper rebuke. It showed furthermore that the loss
of one man would not be permitted to demoralize the service, but that
the cry familiar on the line of battle “Close up! Close up, men!
Forward”! was to be the rallying cry in the attack on the hills of
Panama.
[Illustration: STOCKADE FOR PETTY CANAL ZONE OFFENDERS]
Despite the unfortunate circumstances attending Mr. Wallace’s
retirement, his work had been good, so far as it went. In office a
little more than a year he had spent more than three months of the time
in Washington or at sea. But he had made more than a beginning in
systematizing the work, in repairing the railroad, in renovating the old
machinery and actually making “the dirt fly”. Of that objectionable
substance--on the line of the canal, if anywhere, they applaud the
definition “dirt is matter out of place”--he had excavated 744,644
yards. Not much of a showing judged by the records of 1913, but
excellent for the machinery available in 1905. The first steam shovel
was installed during his régime and before he left nine were working.
The surveys, under his direction, were of great advantage to his
successor who never failed to acknowledge their merit.
[Illustration: HOSPITAL BUILDINGS, UNITED FRUIT CO.]
Mr. Stevens, who reached the canal, adopted at the outset the wise
determination to reduce construction work to the minimum and concentrate
effort on completing arrangements for housing and feeding the army of
workers which might be expected as soon as the interminable question of
the sea level or lock canal could be finally determined. From his
administration dates much of the good work done in the organization of
the Commissary and Subsistence Department, and the development of the
railroad. The inducement of free quarters added to high wages to attract
workers also originated with him. At the same time Gov. Magoon was
working over the details of civil administration, the schools, courts,
police system and road building. The really fundamental work of canal
building, the preparation of the ground for the edifice yet to be
erected, made great forward strides at this period. But the actual
record of excavation was but small.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
BEGINNING THE NEW DOCKS, CRISTOBAL]
One reason for this was the hesitation over the type of canal to be
adopted. It is obvious that several hundred thousand cubic yards of dirt
dug out of a ditch have to be dumped somewhere. If deposited at one
place the dump would be in the way of a sea-level canal while
advantageous for the lock type. At another spot this condition would be
reversed. Already the Americans had been compelled to move a second time
a lot of spoil which the French had excavated, and which, under the
American plans, was in danger of falling back into Culebra Cut. “As a
gift of prophecy is withheld from us in these latter days,” wrote
Stevens plaintively in reference to the vacillation concerning the
plans, “all we can do now is to make such arrangements as may look
proper as far ahead as we can see.”
President Roosevelt meanwhile was doing all he could to hasten
determination of the problem. Just before the appointment of Mr. Stevens
he appointed an International Board of Advisory Engineers, five being
foreign and nine American, to examine into the subject and make
recommendations. They had before them a multiplicity of estimates upon
which to base their recommendations and it may be noted eight years
after the event that not one of the estimates came within one hundred
million dollars of the actual cost. From which it appears that when a
nation undertakes a great public work it encounters the same financial
disillusionments that come to the young homebuilder when he sets out to
build him a house from architect’s plans guaranteed to keep the cost
within a fixed amount.
Poor De Lesseps estimated the cost of a sea-level canal at $131,000,000,
though it is fair to say for the French engineers whose work is so
generally applauded by our own that their estimate was several million
dollars higher. The famous International Congress had estimated the cost
of a sea-level canal at $240,000,000. In fact the French spent
$260,000,000 and excavated about 80,000,000 cubic yards of earth! Then
came on our estimators. The Spooner act airily authorized $135,000,000
for a canal of any type, and is still in force though we have already
spent twice that amount. The Walker Commission fixed the cost of a
sea-level canal with a dam at Alhajuela and a tide lock at Miraflores at
$240,000,000. The majority of President Roosevelt’s Board of Advisory
Engineers reported in favor of a sea-level canal and estimated its cost
at $250,000,000; the minority declared for a lock canal fixing its cost
“in round numbers” at $140,000,000. Engineer Wallace put the cost of a
sea-level canal at $300,000,000 exclusive of the $50,000,000 paid for
the Canal Zone. Col. Goethals came in in 1908, with the advantage of
some years of actual construction, and fixed the cost of the sea-level
canal at $563,000,000 and the lock type at $375,000,000. He guesses best
who guesses last, but it may be suggested in the vernacular of the
streets that even Col. Goethals “had another guess coming”.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
A BACK STREET IN COLON
This street is as clean and well paved as any in the United States]
On all these estimates the most illuminating comment is furnished by the
Official Handbook of the Panama Canal for 1913 showing total
expenditures to November 1, 1912, of $270,625,624 exclusive of
fortification expenditures. The Congressional appropriations to the same
date, all of which were probably utilized by midsummer of 1913, were
$322,551,448.76.
The action of his Advisory Board put President Roosevelt for the moment
in an embarrassing position. A swinging majority declared for a
sea-level canal, and even when the influence of Engineer Stevens, who
was not a member of the Board, was exerted for the lock type it left the
advocates of that form of canal still in the minority. To ask a body of
eminent scientists to advise one and then have them advise against one’s
own convictions creates a perplexing situation. But Roosevelt was not
one to allow considerations of this sort to weigh much with him when he
had determined a matter in his own mind. Accordingly he threw his
influence for the lock type, sent a resounding message to Congress and
had the satisfaction of seeing his views approved by that body June 29,
1906. It had been two years and two months since the Americans came to
Panama, and though at last the form of canal was determined upon there
are not lacking today men of high scientific and political standing who
hold that an error was made, and that ultimately the great locks will be
abandoned and the canal bed brought down to tide water.
[Illustration: STEAM SHOVEL AT WORK]
The Americans on the Isthmus now got fairly into their stride.
Determination of the type of canal at once determined the need for the
Gatun Dam, spillway and locks. It necessitated the shifting of the
roadbed of the Panama railroad as the original bed would be covered by
the new lake. The development of the commissary system which supplied
every thing needful for the daily life of the employee, the
establishment of quarters, the creation of a public school system, were
all well under way. Then arose a new issue which split the second
Commission and again threatened to turn things topsy-turvy.
[Illustration: THE BALBOA ROAD
The trolley line shown will extend from Balboa, through Panama and Ancon
to the ruins of Old Panama]
Chairman Shonts, himself a builder of long experience and well
accustomed to dealing with contractors, was firmly of the opinion that
the canal could best be built by letting contracts to private bidders
for the work. In this he was opposed by most of his associates, and
particularly by Mr. Stevens who had been working hard and efficiently to
build up an organization that would be capable of building the canal
without the interposition of private contractors looking for personal
profit. The employees on the Zone, naturally enough, were with Stevens
to a man, and time has shown that he and they were right. There is
something about working for the nation that stirs a man’s loyalty as
mere private employment never can. But in this instance Mr. Shonts was
in Washington, convenient to the ear of the President while Mr. Stevens
was on the Zone. Accordingly the President approved of the Chairman’s
plan, and directed the Secretary of War, Mr. Taft, to advertise for
bids. Mr. Stevens was discontented and showed it. That his judgment
would be justified in the end he could not know. That it had been set
aside for the moment he was keenly aware, and that he was being harassed
by Congress and by innumerable rules such as no veteran railroad builder
had ever been subjected to did not add to his comfort.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
A DRILL BARGE AT WORK
The sea and tidal waters are underlaid with coral rock necessitating
much submarine blasting]
His complaints to the Secretary of War were many, and not of a sort to
contribute to that official’s peace of mind. When the bids came in from
the would-be contractors they were all rejected on the ground that they
did not conform to the specifications, but the real reason was that the
President at heart did not believe in that method of doing the work, and
was sure that the country agreed with him. This should have allayed Mr.
Stevens’ rising discontent. It certainly offended Chairman Shonts, who
stood for the contract system, and when the bids were rejected and that
system set aside promptly resigned. The President thereupon consolidated
the offices of Chairman of the Commission and Chief Engineer in one, Mr.
Stevens being appointed that one. Given thus practically unlimited power
Mr. Stevens might have been expected to be profoundly contented with the
situation. Instead he too resigned on the first of April, 1907.
[Illustration: _Photo by S. H. Elliott_
PACIFIC ENTRANCE TO THE CANAL]
About his resignation as about that of Mr. Wallace there has always been
a certain amount of mystery. He himself made no explanation of his act,
though his friends conjectured that he was not wholly in harmony with
the President’s plan to abolish the civilian commission altogether, and
fill its posts by appointments from the Army and Navy. On the Isthmus
there is a story that he did not intend to resign at all. Albert
Edwards, who heard the story early, tells it thus:
“One of the canal employees, who was on very friendly terms with
Stevens, came into his office and found him in the best of spirits. When
the business in hand was completed he said jovially:
“‘Read this. I’ve just been easing my mind to T. R. It’s a hot
one--isn’t it?’ And he handed over the carbon copy of his letter. His
visitor read it with great seriousness.
“‘Mr. Stevens’, he said, ‘that is the same as a resignation’.
“And Stevens laughed.
“‘Why, I’ve said that kind of thing to the Colonel a dozen times. He
knows I don’t mean to quit this job’.
“But about three hours after the letter reached Washington Mr. Stevens
received a cablegram: ‘Your resignation accepted’”.
At any rate the Stevens resignation called forth no such explosive
retort as had been directed against the unhappy Wallace, and he showed
no later signs of irritation, but came to the defense of his successor
in a letter strongly approving the construction of certain locks and
dams which were for the moment the targets of general public criticism.
Two weeks before Stevens resigned the other members of the Commission,
excepting Col. Gorgas, in response to a hint from the President had sent
in their resignations. Mr. Roosevelt had determined that henceforward
the work should be done by army and navy officers, trained to go where
the work was to be done and to stay there until recalled; men who had
entered the service of the nation for life and were not looking about
constantly to “better their conditions”. He had determined further that
the government should be the sole contractor, the only employer, the
exclusive paymaster, landlord and purveyor of all that was needful on
the Zone. In short he had planned for the Canal Zone a form of
administration which came to be called socialistic and gave cold chills
to those who stand in dread of that doctrine. To carry out these
purposes he appointed on April 1, 1907, the following commission:
Lieut.-Col. George W. Goethals, _Chairman and Chief Engineer_,
Major D. D. Gaillard, U. S. A.,
Major William L. Sibert, U. S. A.,
Mr. H. H. Rousseau, U. S. N.,
Col. W. C. Gorgas, U. S. A., Medical Corps,
Mr. J. C. S. Blackburn,
Mr. Jackson Smith,
Mr. Joseph Bucklin Bishop, _Secretary_.
A majority of this commission was in office at the time of publication
of this book, and gave evidences of sticking to the job until its
completion. Senator Blackburn resigned in 1910 and was succeeded by Hon.
Maurice H. Thatcher, also of Kentucky; and Mr. Smith retired in favor of
Lieut. Col. Hodges in 1908. In June, 1913, Commissioner Thatcher
resigned and was succeeded by Richard L. Metcalfe of Nebraska. With the
creation of this commission began the forceful and conclusive
administration of Col. Goethals, the man who finished the canal.
CHAPTER IX
COL. GOETHALS AT THE THROTTLE
The visitor to the Canal Zone about 1913 could hardly spend a day in
that bustling community without becoming aware of some mighty potentate
not at all mysterious, but omnipresent and seemingly omniscient, to whom
all matters at issue were referred, to whom nothing was secret, whose
word was law and without whose countenance the mere presence of a
visitor on the Zone was impossible. The phrases most in use were “see
the Colonel,” “ask the Colonel” and “the Colonel says”. If there had
been a well-conducted newspaper on the Zone these phrases would have
been cast in slugs in its composing room for repeated and ready use. No
President of the United States, not even Lincoln in war times, exerted
the authority he daily employed in the zenith of his power. The
aggrieved wife appealed to his offices for the correction of her marital
woes, and the corporation with a $600,000 steam crane to sell talked
over its characteristics with the Colonel.
He could turn from a vexed question of adjusting the work of the steam
shovels to a new slide in the Culebra Cut, to compose the differences of
rival dancing clubs over dates at the Tivoli Hotel ball-room. On all
controverted questions there was but one court of last resort. As an
Isthmian poetaster put it:
“See Colonel Goethals, tell Colonel Goethals,
It’s the only right and proper thing to do.
Just write a letter, or even better
Arrange a little Sunday interview”.
Engineer Stevens in a speech made at the moment of his retirement before
a local club of workers said:
“You don’t need me any longer. All you have to do now is to dig a ditch.
What you want is a statesman”.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
COL. GOETHALS AT HIS DESK]
A statesman was found and his finding exemplifies strikingly the fact
that when a great need arises the man to meet it is always at hand,
though frequently in obscurity. Major George W. Goethals of the General
Staff, stationed at Washington was far from being in the public eye.
Anyone who knows his Washington well knows that the General Staff is a
sort of general punching bag for officers of the Army who cannot get
appointments to it, and for newspaper correspondents who are fond of
describing its members as fusty bureaucrats given to lolling in the Army
and Navy Club while the Army sinks to the level of a mere ill-ordered
militia. But even in this position Major Goethals had not attained
sufficient eminence to have been made a target for the slings and arrows
of journalistic criticism. As a member of the Board of Fortifications,
however, he had attracted the attention of Secretary Taft, and through
him had been brought into personal relations with President Roosevelt.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
RAILWAY STATION AT GATUN
The Panama Railroad is being equipped with stations and rolling stock of
the first-class]
Of course when a man has “made good” everybody is quick to discern in
him the qualities which compel success. But Roosevelt must have been
able to discover them in the still untested Goethals, for when the
Stevens resignation reached Washington the President at once turned to
him with the remark, “I’ve tried two civilians in the Canal and they’ve
both quit. We can’t build the canal with a new chief engineer every
year. Now I’m going to give it to the Army and to somebody who can’t
quit.”
John F. Stevens resigned April 1, 1907, and on the same day Col.
Goethals became Chief Engineer of the Panama Canal, and the supreme
arbiter of the destinies of all men and things on the Canal Zone.
Everybody with a literary turn of mind who goes down there describes him
as the Benevolent Despot, and that crabbed old philosopher Thomas
Carlyle would be vastly interested could he but see how the benevolent
despotism which he described as ideal but impossible is working
successfully down in the semi-civilized tropics.
Before describing in detail Col. Goethals’ great work, the digging of
the canal, let me relate some incidents which show what manner of man it
was that took the reins when the Americans on the ditch swung into their
winning stride.
This is the way they tell one story on the Isthmus:
A somewhat fussy and painfully perturbed man bustled into the office of
Col. Goethals one morning and plunged into his tale of woe.
“Now I got that letter of yours, Colonel”, he began but stopped there
checked by a cold gaze from those quiet blue eyes.
“I beg your pardon”, said the Colonel suavely, “but you must be
mistaken. I have written you no letter”.
“Oh, yes, Colonel, it was about that work down at Miraflores”.
“Oh, I see. You spoke a little inaccurately. You meant you received my
orders, not a letter. You have the orders, so that matter is settled.
Was there anything else you wished to talk with me about”?
But the visitor’s topic of conversation had been summarily exhausted
and, somewhat abashed, he faded away.
[Illustration: PRESIDENT TAFT ARRIVES]
And again: A high official of the Isthmian Commission had been somewhat
abruptly translated from the Washington office to Ancon. There was no
house suitable for his occupancy and the Colonel ordered one built to be
ready, let us say, October first. Meanwhile the prospective tenant and
his family abode at the Tivoli Hotel which, even to one enjoying the
reduced rates granted to employees, is no inexpensive spot. Along about
the middle of August he began to get apprehensive. A few foundation
pillars were all that was to be seen of the twelve-room house, of the
type allotted to members of the Commission, which was to be his. He
spoke of his fears to the Colonel at lunch one day.
[Illustration: COL. GOETHALS REVIEWING THE MARINES AT CAMP ELLIOTT]
“Let’s walk over to the site and see”, remarked that gentleman calmly.
It may be noted in passing that walking over and seeing is one of the
Colonel’s favorite stunts. There are mighty few, if any, points on the
Canal Zone which he has not walked over and seen, with the result that
his knowledge of the progress of the work is not only precise but
personal. But to return to the house a-building. On arrival there three
or four workmen were found plugging away in a leisurely manner under the
eye of a foreman to whom the Colonel straightway addressed himself, “You
understand the orders relative to this job”? he said to the foreman,
tentatively.
“Oh, yes, Colonel”, responded that functionary cheerfully, “it is
ordered for October first, and we are going to do our very best”.
“Pardon me”, blandly but with a suspicion of satire, “I was afraid you
did not understand the order and I see I was right. Your order is to
have this house ready for occupancy October first. There isn’t anything
said about doing your best. The house is to be finished at the time
fixed”.
[Illustration: PRESIDENT TAFT AND “THE COLONEL”]
Turning, the Colonel walked away, giving no heed to the effort of the
foreman to reopen the conversation. Next day that individual called on
the prospective tenant.
“Say”, he began ingratiatingly, “you don’t really need to be in that
house October first, do you? Would a few days more or less make any
difference to you”?
“Not a bit”.
“Well, then”, cheering up, “won’t you just tell the Colonel a little
delay won’t bother you”?
“Not I! I want to stay on this Isthmus. If you want to try to get the
Colonel’s orders changed you do it. But none of that for me”.
And the day before the time fixed the house was turned over complete.
It is fair to say however that peremptory as is Col. Goethals in his
orders, and implacable in his insistence on literal obedience, he yields
to the orders of those who rank him precisely what he exacts from those
whom he commands. The following dialogue from a hearing before the House
Committee on Appropriations will illustrate my point. The subject matter
was the new Washington Hotel at Colon.
“_The Chairman:_ Did you ever inquire into the right of the Panama
Railroad Company, under the laws of the State of New York, to go into
the hotel business?
“_Col. Goethals:_ No sir; I got an order from the President of the
United States to build that hotel and I built it”.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
BIG GUNS FOR CANAL DEFENCE
The upper part shows a 16-inch rifle being tested at Sandy Hook. The
gun, which is of the type adopted for the Canal defenses, throws a 2,400
pound shell to an extreme range of 22 miles. It could drop a shell into
Wall Street from Sandy Hook. One shell striking a battleship fairly
would put her out of business. The lower part of picture shows
comparative size of the gun]
[Illustration: COL. GOETHALS ENCOURAGES THE NATIONAL GAME]
This military habit of absolute command and implicit obedience is not
attended in Col. Goethals’ case with any of what civilians are
accustomed to call “fuss and feathers”. On the Zone he was never seen in
uniform, and it is said, indeed, that he brought none to Panama. His
mind in fact is that of the master, not of the martinet. If he compels
obedience, he commands respect and seems to inspire real affection. In a
stay of some weeks at Panama during which time I associated intimately
with men in every grade of the Commission’s service I heard not one word
of criticism of his judgment, his methods or even his personality. This
is the more remarkable when it is considered how intimately his
authority is concerned with the personal life of the Isthmian employees.
If one wishes to write a magazine article pertaining to the Canal Zone
the manuscript must be submitted to the Colonel. If complaint is to be
made of a faulty house, or bad commissary service, or a negligent
doctor, or a careless official in any position it is made to the
Colonel. He is the Haroun al Raschid of all the Zone from Cristobal to
Ancon. To his personal courts of complaint, held Sunday mornings when
all the remainder of the canal colony is at rest, come all sorts and
conditions of employees with every imaginable grievance. The court is
wholly inofficial but terribly effective. There is no uniformed bailiff
with his cry of “Hear ye! Hear ye”! No sheriff with jingling handcuffs.
But the orders of that court, though not registered in any calf-bound
law books for the use of generations of lawyers, are obeyed, or, if not
obeyed, enforced. Before this judge any of the nearly 50,000 people
living under his jurisdiction, speaking 45 different languages, and
citizens in many cases of nations thousands of miles away, may come with
any grievance however small. The court is held of a Sunday so as not to
interfere with the work of the complainants, for you will find that on
the Zone the prime consideration of every act is to avoid interference
with work. The Colonel hears the complaints patiently, awards judgment
promptly and sees that it is enforced. There is no system of
constitutional checks and balances in his domain. He is the legislative,
judicial and executive branches in one--or to put it less technically
but more understandably, what the Colonel says goes. It is, I think,
little less than marvelous that a man in the continual exercise of such
a power should awaken so little criticism as he. It is true that those
who displease him he may summarily deport, thus effectually stilling any
local clamor against his policy, but I am unable to discover that he has
misused, or even often used, this power.
A young man comes in with an important problem affecting the social life
of the Zone. His particular dancing club desires to use the ball room at
the Tivoli Hotel on a certain night, but the room was engaged for that
date and the other nights suggested did not fit the convenience of the
club, so there was nothing to do but to put it up to the Colonel, who
put aside the responsibilities of the head of a $400,000,000 canal job
and President of the Panama Railway to fix a date whereon the young folk
of that aspiring social club might Turkey trot and Tango to their
hearts’ content. So far as I know the Colonel has not yet been appealed
to by the moralists of the Zone to censor the dances.
[Illustration: OLD FRENCH LADDER DREDGES STILL USED]
Troubles between workmen and their bosses of course make up a
considerable share of the business before the court. Once a man came in
with an evident air of having been ill-used. He had been discharged and
the Colonel promptly inquired why.
“Because I can’t play baseball”, was the surprising response of the
discharged one, who had been a steamshoveler.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE COLONEL’S DAILY STROLL]
It appeared on inquiry that the drill men had challenged the
steamshovelers to a match at the national game, and dire apprehensions
of defeat filled the minds of the latter because they had no pitcher. At
this juncture there providentially appeared a man seeking a job who was
a scientific twirler whether he knew much about steamshoveling or not.
The American sporting spirit was aroused. The man with the job who
couldn’t pitch lost it to the man who could but had no job. So he came
to the Colonel with his tale of woe.
Now that sagacious Chief Engineer knows that the American sporting
spirit is one of the great forces to be relied upon for the completion
of the canal. The same sentiment which led the shovelers to use every
device to down the drillers at baseball would animate them when they
were called to fight with the next slide for possession of Culebra Cut.
Some employers would have sent the man back to his boss with a curt
order of reinstatement--and the shovelers would have lost the game and
something of their spirit. So after a moment of reflection the Colonel
said quietly to the man:
“They want shovelers on the Pacific end. Go over there in the morning
and go to work”.
The feudal authority, the patriarchal power which Col. Goethals
possesses over the means of livelihood of every man on the Zone, nay
more, over their very right to stay on the Zone at all, gives to his
decisions more immediate effect than attends those of a court. The man
who incurs his displeasure may lose his job, be ousted from his lodgings
and deported from the Isthmus if the Colonel so decrees. A Jamaican
negress came in to complain that her husband took her earnings away from
her; would not work himself but lived and loafed on the fruits of her
industry. The Colonel ordered the man to allow her to keep her earnings.
The man demurred saying sullenly that the English law gave a husband
command over his wife’s wages.
[Illustration: A SIDE DRILL CREW AT WORK]
“All right,” said the Colonel, “you’re from Jamaica. I’ll deport you
both and you can get all the English law you want”.
The husband paid back the money he had confiscated and the pair stayed.
Family affairs are aired in the Colonel’s court to a degree which must
somewhat abash that simple and direct warrior. What the dramatists call
“the eternal triangle” is not unknown on the Zone, nor is the
unscriptural practice of coveting your neighbor’s wife wholly without
illustration. For such situations the Colonel’s remedy is specific and
swift--deportation of the one that makes the trouble. Sometimes the
deportation of two has been found essential, but while gossip of these
untoward incidents is plentiful in the social circles of Culebra and
Ancon the judge in the case takes no part in it.
It is not in me to write a character sketch of Col. Goethals. That is
rather a task for one who has known him intimately and has been able to
observe the earlier manifestations of those qualities that led President
Roosevelt to select him as the supreme chief of the canal work. All his
life he has been an army engineer, having a short respite from active
work in the field when he was professor of engineering at West Point.
Fortifications and locks were his specialties and fortifications and
locks have engaged his chief attention since he undertook the Panama
job. Perhaps it is due to his intensely military attitude that the
public has insensibly come to look upon the canal in its quality as an
aid to national defense rather than a stimulus to national commerce. For
the Colonel any discussion of the need for fortifying the canal was the
merest twaddle, and he had his way. He begged long for a standing army
of 25,000 men on the Zone, but it is doubtful whether he will win this
fight. Moreover he would so subordinate all considerations to the
military one that he urges the expulsion from the Zone of all save canal
employees that the danger of betrayal may be less. How far that policy
shall be approved by Congress is yet to be determined. Thus far however
the Colonel has handled Congress with notable success and even there his
dominant spirit may yet triumph.
[Illustration: THE COLONEL’S FIRE WORKS
A big blast in Culebra Cut. In one year 27,252 tons of dynamite were
used]
Power on the Zone, however, autocratic and absolute, Col. Goethals
possesses. It was conferred on him formally by the order of Jan. 6,
1908, giving the Chairman authority to reorganize the service at his own
discretion, subject of course to review by the President or Secretary of
War. The first effect of this was the abolition of a large list of
departments with high sounding names, and concentration of their
functions in the quartermaster’s department with Major C. A. Devol at
its head. The Colonel developed in fact a rage for abolishing and
concentrating departments. He did not go quite as far as Nero who wished
that Rome had but one neck that he might strike off its head at a blow,
but he certainly reduced the number of responsible chiefs to such a
point that it was easy to place the fault if work lagged or blunders
multiplied.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
A HEAVY BLAST UNDER WATER]
Col. Goethals’ first annual report was issued after he had been in
command only three months, covering therefore nine months of the Stevens
administration, and was dated at the end of the fiscal year, June 30,
1907. He reported that 80 per cent. of the plant necessary for
completing the work was on the ground or had been ordered. When he
arrived the high water-mark for excavating in Culebra Cut was 900,000
cubic yards a month, and since his rule began it has never fallen below
the million mark, except in May, 1908. It may be noted in passing, that
during the first two years of his administration the average for
excavation along the whole line exceeded three million cubic yards a
month. During the whole administration of Messrs. Wallace and Stevens
only six million yards had been removed. The contrasting figures are
given not as reflecting on the earlier engineers, but as indicating the
rapidity with which the equipment and efficiency of the canal
organization were increased when the battle of the levels was ended and
the civilian commission done away with.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE COLONEL’S DAILY MEAL]
In this report Col. Goethals argued vigorously against turning over the
canal work to private contractors--a matter which the President had
asked him to report upon in detail. He pointed out that the canal
required special equipment for which no contractor could find use after
the expiration of his contract and which therefore the government might
just as well buy and own itself. The force of this argument became
particularly apparent as the work approached completion. Projects for
the utilization of the plant were sent into Congress from every section
of the country. It was strongly urged that the plant be sent _en bloc_
to Alaska to build railroads and open that rich, but long shut-in
territory to settlement and development. Other friends of the
reclamation service urged that it be employed in draining semi-submerged
lands in the Mississippi Valley and digging irrigating ditches in the
Southwest. The floods of the spring of 1913 caused an active demand for
its employment on Ohio rivers. It is fair to note that Mr. Stevens made
the first energetic fight for the establishment of the system under
which the government owns this colossal and almost invaluable plant,
while Col. Goethals’ recommendation put upon it the final stamp of
official approval.
This act has importance which will long outlive the construction period
of the canal. By the time that work is completed it will have
demonstrated beyond doubt that the United States government is perfectly
capable of doing its own construction work without the intervention of
private contractors; that it not only can build the biggest dam in the
world, erect the mightiest locks that ever raised a ship, and dig a
channel through the backbone of a continent, but is quite able to
perform the lesser functions incident thereto. It can, and did,
successfully conduct hotels and a railroad and steamship line, maintain
eating-houses and furnish household supplies. After the Panama exhibit
it will take either a brave or a singularly stupid man to preach the
ancient dread of a paternalistic government.
[Illustration: “THE GOETHALS’ OWN” IN ACTION
Attacking a stronghold of the Culebra Slide with a regiment of men and a
battery of machines]
Early in Col. Goethals’ régime the great department of engineering and
construction was split into three subdivisions, namely,
_The Atlantic Division_, comprising the canal from deep water in the
Caribbean to, and including, the Gatun locks and dam. In all this
covered about seven miles of the canal only, but one of its most
difficult and interesting features.
_The Central Division_, including Gatun Lake and the Culebra Cut to the
Pedro Miguel lock, or about 32 miles of canal.
_The Pacific Division_, including the Pedro Miguel and Miraflores locks,
and the canal from the foot of the latter to deep water in the Pacific.
Under this classification will be described the construction work on the
canal, work which at the time of the author’s visit was clear to view,
impressive in its magnitude, appalling in the multiplicity of its
details, and picturesque in method and accomplishment. With the turning
of the water into the channel all this will be hidden as the works of a
watch disappear when the case is snapped shut. The canal, they say, and
rightly, will be Goethals’ monument--though there are those who think it
a monument to Col. Gorgas, while quite a few hold that the fame of
Theodore Roosevelt might be further exalted by this work. But whomsoever
it may commemorate as a monument it was even more impressive in the
building than in the completed form.
[Illustration: _Photo by S. H. Elliott_
BAS OBISPO END OF CULEBRA CUT]
One Sunday late in my stay on the Isthmus I was going over the line from
Ancon to Culebra. As we approached the little tunnel near Miraflores I
noticed an unusual stir for the day, for on the Canal Zone the day of
rest is almost religiously observed. Men were swarming along the line,
moving tracks, driving spikes, ramming ballast. I asked one in authority
what it all meant. “Oh”, said he, “we’re going to begin running dirt
trains through the tunnel, and that necessitates double tracking some of
the line. The Colonel said it must be done by tomorrow and we’ve got
more than 1000 men on the job this quiet Sunday. The Colonel’s orders
you know”.
Yes, I knew, and everybody on the Canal Zone knows.
CHAPTER X
GATUN DAM AND LOCKS
Entering the Panama Canal from the Atlantic, one finds the beginning of
that section called by the engineers the Atlantic Division, four miles
out at sea in Limon Bay, a shallow arm of the Caribbean on the shore of
which are Colon and the American town of Cristobal. From its beginning,
marked only by the outermost of a double line of buoys, the canal
extends almost due south seven miles to the lowest of the Gatun Locks.
Of this distance four miles is a channel dredged out of the bottom of
Limon Bay and the bottom width of the canal from its beginning to the
locks is 500 feet. Its depth on this division will be 41 feet at mean
tide. For the protection of vessels entering the canal at the Atlantic
end, or lying in Colon harbor, a great breakwater 10,500 feet, or a few
feet less than two miles long, made of huge masses of rock blasted along
the line of the Canal, or especially quarried at Porto Bello, extends
from Toro Point to Colon light. In all it will contain 2,840,000 cubic
yards of rock and its estimated cost is $5,500,000.
In the original plans for the harbor of Cristobal a second breakwater
was proposed to extend at an angle to the guard one, but the success of
the former in breaking the force of the seas that are raised by the
fierce northers that blow between October and January has been so great
that this may never be needed. Its need is further obviated by the
construction of the great mole of stone and concrete which juts out from
the Cristobal shore for 3500 feet at right angles to the Canal. From
this mole five massive piers will extend into the harbor, jutting out
like fingers on a hand, each 1000 feet long and with the space between
them 300 feet wide so that two 1000 foot ships may dock at one time in
each slip. The new port of Cristobal starts out with pier facilities
which New York had not prepared for the reception of great ships like
the “Vaterland” and the “Aquitania” at the time of their launching.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO GATUN LOCKS
The rafts in the foreground carry pipes through which suction dredges
discharge material removed]
[Illustration: I. COLON: THESE PICTURES IN ORDER FORM A PANORAMA OF THE
COLON WATER FRONT]
[Illustration: II. COLON: PART OF THE RESIDENTIAL DISTRICT ON THE WATER
FRONT]
[Illustration: III. COLON: PANAMA RAILROAD AND ROYAL MAIL DOCKS]
[Illustration: IV. COLON: THE DE LESSEPS HOUSE IN THE DISTANCE SHOWS
LOCATION OF NEW DOCKS]
From the shore of the bay to the first Gatun lock is a little less than
four miles. The French dug a canal penetrating this section, a canal
which forms today part of our harbor and which has been used to some
extent for the transportation of material for the Gatun dam. Our
engineers however abandoned it as part of our permanent line, and it is
rapidly filling up or being over-grown by vegetation. At its best it was
about fifteen miles long, 15 feet deep as far as Gatun, and 7 feet deep
thence to the now vanished village of Bohio.
The Canal from the seaboard to the Gatun locks was straightaway
excavation, through land little higher than the water, with tidewater
following so that the work could be done by floating dredges. No novel
problems were presented to the engineer, nor are interesting
achievements displayed to the tourist until the great dam itself is
reached.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
SOUTH APPROACH WALL, GATUN LOCKS]
The simplest way of reaching the Gatun dam is of course by train from
Colon, a ride of perhaps twenty minutes. But a more spectacular one is
by launch, either up the Canal, or around by the Chagres River from its
mouth. The latter is a difficult trip however and seldom essayed. One
advantage of taking the Canal is that it gives a much clearer idea of
the construction of the dam than can be derived by approaching it by
railroad. The first significant fact forced upon your attention in thus
coming upon the dam is that it does not look like a dam at all, but
rather like a long and gently sloping hill pierced at one point by a
sort of masonry gate which upon closer approach reveals itself as a
system of mighty locks.
[Illustration: GATUN LOCKS OPENING INTO THE LAKE
The skeleton structure on the left is the frame-work of the emergency
dam which swings directly athwart the lock]
Not very long ago there was a wide-spread apprehension in the United
States, bred of a rather shallow newspaper criticism very widely
republished, that the Gatun dam would prove inadequate to the pressure
of the waters impounded behind it and might collapse, or “topple over”.
If all who have been impressed by that gruesome prophecy could see the
dam itself their apprehensions would be speedily quieted. One might as
well talk of toppling over the pyramids, or Murray Hill, New York (not
the structures on it, but the hill itself) or the Treasury Building at
Washington. Elevations, natural or artificial, the base of which is
eight to ten times their height, cannot topple over while the force of
gravity continues to operate. Now the height of Gatun dam is 105 feet,
and from its crest the filling of clay and rock slopes gently away on
the landward side for nearly half a mile. There are more abrupt
eminences on many of our rolling prairies. The face on the lake side
descends somewhat more abruptly, but is still several hundred feet long
before its slope ends with the bed of the lake. This face is covered
with broken stone down to the “toe”--as they call the walls of rough
rock between which the dirt dam was built.
[Illustration: _Photo by Thompson_
GATUN LAKE SEEN FROM THE DAM]
[Illustration: _Copyright, 1911, by Munn & Co. Inc. From Scientific
American_
BIRD’S EYE VIEW OF GATUN DAM
In the foreground the locks, only two of the three steps being fully
shown. In the middle distance the spillway, through which surplus water
flows into the Chagres and old French Canal]
The method of building the dam was simple enough even though it sounds
complicated in the telling. When Congress acquiesced in the minority
report of the Board of International Engineers, approved by the
President and recommending a lock type canal, it meant that instead of
simply digging a ditch across the Isthmus we would create a great
artificial lake 85 feet above sea level, confined by dams at either
ends, with locks and two short canals to give communication with the
oceans. To create this lake it was determined to impound the waters of
the Chagres, and a site near the village of Gatun, through which the old
French canal passed, was selected for this purpose. Conditions of
topography of course determined this site. The Chagres valley here is
7,920 feet wide, but the determining fact was that about the center of
the valley was a hill of rock which afforded solid foundation for a
concrete dam for the spillway. Geologists assert that at one time the
floor of the valley was 300 feet higher than now, and that in the ages
the Chagres River cut away the shallow gorges on either side of the
rocky hill. These, it was determined, could readily be obstructed by a
broad earth dam of the type determined upon, but for the spillway with
its powerhouse and flood gates a rock foundation was essential and this
was furnished by the island.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
CONSTRUCTION WORK ON GATUN DAM
The space between two rock walls has been filled with mud, which having
hardened, supports dirt trains bringing spoil from Culebra Cut to build
up the dam to required dimensions]
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
PUMPING MUD INTO THE CORE OF GATUN DAM]
The first step in the construction of the dam was to dam the Chagres
then flowing through its old channel near the site chosen for the
spillway, and through the old French canal. This was accomplished by
building parallel walls, or “toes” of broken stone and filling the space
between with fluid mud pumped from the old channel of the stream. A new
channel of course was provided called the “west diversion”. The toes are
about a quarter of a mile apart and rise about 30 feet high. They were
built by the customary devices of building trestles on which dump trains
bearing the material were run. After the core of fluid silt pumped in
between the walls had begun to harden, dry earth was piled upon it,
compressing it and squeezing out the remaining moisture. As this surface
became durable the railroad tracks were shifted to it, and when I
visited the dam in 1913 the made land of the dam was undistinguishable
from the natural ground surrounding it. Over it scores of locomotives
were speeding, dragging ponderous trains heavy laden with “spoil” from
the Culebra Cut. From the crest on the one hand the dam sloped away in a
gentle declivity nearly half a mile long to the original jungle on the
one side, and a lesser distance on the other, to the waters of the Gatun
Lake then less than half filled. When the main body of the dam had
been completed and the spillway was ready to carry off the waters of the
Chagres then flowing through the “west diversion” the task of damming
the latter was begun. This was the first effort to stem the current of
the Chagres, the river dreaded for so many reasons, and the description
by Lieutenant Colonel William L. Sibert, the engineer in charge of this
division, will be of interest:
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT
A NATIVE BAKERY
The Panamanian never does anything indoors that he can do in the open.
The village bakery, the village mortar or mill and the village laundry
are social meeting places used by all.]
[Illustration: GATUN UPPER LOCK]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood and Underwood_
CENTER: GATUN CENTER LIGHT; LOWER CORNER: EMERGENCY GATES]
“The elevation of the spillway channel is 10 feet above sea level,
consequently in any attempt to stop the flow of the Chagres and force it
through this channel, a rise of about 14 feet of water had to be
encountered. The banks and bottom of the west diversion were soft clay.
The plan adopted was to drive trestles across this channel on the
30-foot contour on each face of the dam, and to build, by dumping rock
directly into the stream, two dams at the same time, hoping to
distribute on such dams the head formed during construction. An
unlimited amount of waste rock was available for this work. The banks of
the channels were first made secure by dumping rock at the end of the
trestles. After the channel was contracted to some extent, a
considerable current developed; rock dumped from the trestles was
carried some distance down stream, forming a rock apron in the bed of
the stream below the dam. Quite deep holes, however, were dug by the
water below this rock apron. When the work on the two dams had
progressed so that a channel about 80 feet wide and 6 feet deep was left
in the center, it was found impracticable to make any headway. Stone
dumped from the trestles would be rolled down stream. The rainy season
was then about to commence. The lower part of the bents of the trestles
being well supported with rock, it was then decided to dump a carload or
two of crooked rails above the trestles in such a way that they would
form an entanglement and stop the rock, thus insuring either the
construction of the dam or the taking out of the trestle. By this means
the two dams were finally completed and the Chagres River successfully
diverted.”
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
SPILLWAY UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Concrete is dumped directly from the railway into the moulds. Pipes to
the power house are shown]
To the unprofessional observer the Gatun dam is a disappointment as a
spectacle. It does not look like a dam at all, but merely like a
continuation of one of the hills it connects. But as a matter of fact it
is the greatest dam in the world--a mile and a half long, 105 feet high,
half a mile thick at its base, 398 feet at the surface of the lake and
100 feet wide at the top. It is longer and higher than the Assouan dam
which the British built across the Nile though the latter, being all of
masonry, is vastly the more picturesque. Into the entire work will go
about 21,000,000 cubic yards of material.
One day while the Gatun dam was in the earlier stages of its
construction in 1908, a newspaper correspondent was temporarily detained
at Gatun while crossing the Isthmus. Idly, to pass the time away, he
strolled out on the dam to where he saw a group of men gathered. He
found them discussing a small break at the edge of the dam upstream; a
break not caused by any pressure of the water, for the water had not
reached that point, but by the weight of the heavy superstructure
pressing upon the semi-fluid core of the dam which then had not had
sufficient time for drainage and drying. The dispatch which the
correspondent sent north as the result of his casual observation of the
slide, was seized upon by the advocates of the sea-level canal as a text
from which to argue the entire impracticability of the lake-level
project. The agitation became so general and so menacing that President
Roosevelt was impelled to appoint a commission of seven engineers of
high professional standing and technical knowledge of dam building to
visit the spot and report upon the menace. Their verdict was that the
Canal engineers had gone far beyond the necessary point in making the
dam ponderous and safe. Secretary of War Taft, who happened to be on the
Isthmus when the break occurred, declared that it was “insignificant
when one takes into consideration the whole size of the dam”.
When the tricky Chagres gets on one of its rainy season rages the
spillway by which the dam is pierced at about its center will be one of
the spectacular points on the Canal line. That river drains a basin
covering 1,320 square miles, and upon which the rains in their season
fall with a persistence and continuity known in hardly any other corner
of the earth. The Chagres has been known to rise as much as 40 feet in
24 hours, and though even this great flood will be measurably lowered by
being distributed over the 164 square miles in Gatun Lake, yet some
system of controlling it by outlets and flood gates was of course
essential to the working and the safety of the Canal. The spillway is
the center of this system, the point at which is the machinery by which
the surface of Gatun Lake can be at all times kept within two feet of
its normal level, which is 85 feet above the level of the sea.
[Illustration: PARTLY COMPLETED SPILLWAY, 1913
The river was low when this picture was taken. At high water it will
flow over the completed structure shown at the right]
Fundamentally the spillway is a channel 1,200 feet long and 285 feet
wide cut through the solid rock of the island which at this point
bisects the now obliterated Chagres Valley. Though cut through rock it
is smoothly lined and floored with cement; closed at its upper end by a
dam, shaped like the arc of a circle so that, while it bars an opening
of only 285 feet, its length is 808 feet. For the benefit of the
unprofessional observer it may be noted that by thus curving a dam in
the direction of the force employed against it, its resisting power is
increased. It resists force exerted horizontally precisely as an arch
resists force, or weight, exerted from above. The dam at the spillway
extends solidly across the opening to a height of 69 feet. But this is
16 feet below the normal level of the Lake. From the top of the solid
dam rise thirteen concrete piers to a height as planned, of 115 feet
above sea level, that is the piers will rise 46 feet above the top of
the dam. Between each two of these piers will be mounted regulating
gates of steel sheathing, made water tight and movable up or down as the
state of the Chagres level requires a free or a restricted passage for
the water. Nor will those operating the gates await the visual
appearance of the flood before throwing wide the passage for its onrush.
At divers points along the Chagres, and throughout its water shed are
little stations whence observers telephone at regular intervals
throughout the day to the office at the spillway the result of their
observations of the river’s height. With these figures at hand the
controller of the gates can foresee the coming of a flood hours before
it begins to beat against the gates.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE GIANT PENSTOCKS OF THE SPILLWAY]
[Illustration: THE SPILLWAY AT HIGH WATER
A comparison with the picture on page 179 will show the varying stages
of the river]
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
LOCK GATES APPROACHING COMPLETION]
The spillway further serves a useful and an essential purpose in that it
harnesses the water power of the useful Chagres, and turns it into
electric power to open and shut the colossal gates of the various locks;
to propel the electric locomotives that tow the great ships through the
concrete channels; to light the canal towns and villages, and the
lighthouses on the line; to run the great cranes at Balboa and
Cristobal; to run the machinery in the shops at Balboa; to furnish
motive power, if so determined for the Panama Railroad, and to swing the
great guns at Toro Point and Naos Island until their muzzles bear with
calm yet frightful menace upon any enemy approaching from either the
Caribbean or the Pacific. There will be power for all these functions,
and power too to light Panama and Colon, to run the Panama tramway and
perform other useful functions if the present grip of private Panama
monopoly upon these public services shall be relinquished. The water
drops 75 feet through huge penstocks to great turbines in the spillway
hydro-electric station with a capacity of 6,000 kilowatts, but the
amount of water power is sufficient for double that current, and
turbines to supply the addition can be installed whenever the need for
the power develops.
[Illustration: THE WATER KNOCKING AT GATUN GATES]
[Illustration: WALL OF GATUN LOCK SHOWING ARCHED CONSTRUCTION]
The Gatun locks are built at the very eastern end of Gatun dam, at the
point where it joins the mainland bordering the Chagres valley. Of their
superficial dimensions I have already spoken, and have described their
appearance as seen from the deck of a ship in passage. It will be hard
however for one who has not stood on the concrete floor of one of these
massive chambers and looked upward to their crest, or walking out on one
of the massive gates peered down into their depths, to appreciate their
full size. It is all very well to say that the “Imperator,” the greatest
of ships now afloat, could find room in one of these locks with five
feet at each side, and fifty feet at each end to spare, but then few of
us have seen the Imperator and nobody has seen her in the lock. It is
all very well to figure that a six story house would not rise above the
coping of one of these locks, but imagination does not visualize the
house there, and moreover there are stories and stories in height. Yet
as one stood on the floor of one of these great monolithic tanks as they
were being rushed to completion in 1913, and saw locomotives dwarfed by
the ponderous walls betwixt which they plied, and whole trains of loaded
dump cars swallowed up in a single lock chamber, one got some idea of
the magnitude of the work. A track for a travelling crane extended down
the center of the chamber and the monster rumbled back and forth
carrying loads of material to their appointed destinations. Across the
whole width of the Canal below the locks stretched cable carriers upheld
by skeleton devices of steel mounted on rails so that the pair of them,
though separated by 500 feet of space, spanned by the sagging cables,
could be moved in unison. Out on the swinging cables ran the loaded cars
or buckets, filled with concrete and dumped with a crash and a roar at
the chosen place. Giant mixers ground up rock from Porto Bello, sand
from Nombre de Dios, and cement from divers states of our union into a
sort of Brobdignagian porridge with which the hungry maws of the moulds
were ceaselessly fed. Men wig-wagged signals with flags across gaping
chasms. Steam whistles blew shrill warnings and cryptic orders. Wheels
rumbled. Pulleys creaked. It seemed that everything a man could do was
being done by machine, yet there was an army of men directing,
correcting and supplementing the mechanical labor.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
TRAVELLING CRANES AT WORK
Mounted on rails these cranes carry the heaviest burdens. Those shown
are placed for delivering concrete to the forms. One crane will cost
$60,000]
Into the locks at Gatun will go 2,000,000 cubic yards of concrete if the
original estimate is adhered to. A statistician estimates that it would
build a wall 8 feet wide and 12 feet high and 133 miles long--which
would just about wall off the state of Delaware from the rest of the
Union.
The side walls of each of the locks are practically monoliths,
constructed of concrete poured into great steel frames or moulds where
it hardens into a solid mass. They are based in the main on bed rock,
though it was found on making tests that the bed rock was not of
sufficient extent to support the guide walls as well, so one of these is
therefore made cellular to lighten its weight, which rests on piles of
60 feet long capped and surrounded with concrete. This wall was built by
slow stages and allowed to stand in order that its settlement might be
uniform. An examination of the picture below will make clear the method
of constructing the lock walls, for in it are shown the completed
monoliths and a steel form half completed with men preparing it for the
concrete therein. Col. Sibert describes the details of the work thus:
“The locks proper are founded on rock and the heavy masonry is
completed. This rock foundation was not of sufficient extent, however,
at available elevations, for supporting the guide walls. Under that
guide wall extending into the lake the underlying rock at the south end
is about 150 feet below sea level, and the overlying material is soft.
This wall is cellular in construction. It is composed of four
longitudinal walls about 2 feet thick with cross walls about 17 feet
apart, all built of reinforced concrete.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
BUILDING A MONOLITH]
“The natural ground underlying the wall was about 8 feet above sea
level. On this ground a wide fill with a very flat slope was constructed
to elevation plus 35, and through this piles about 60 feet long, 4-foot
centers, were driven and a heavy reinforced concrete slab built around
the heads of the piles, on which was erected the cellular structure.
There was a continual slow settlement of this wall as its construction
progressed. It was brought to a height of 61 feet above sea level
through its entire length in order that the settlement might extend over
the whole base before any part was brought to full height.
[Illustration: A CULVERT IN THE LOCK WALL]
“The north guide and flare walls are yet to be built. It will be
necessary to go to a depth of about 70 feet below sea level through very
soft material in order to uncover the rock on which to build the flare
walls. Under the guide wall itself the rock is at a still lower
elevation, and a pile foundation will probably be constructed, the
piling going to rock. The material in this space was too soft to hold up
steam shovels, and it was decided to do the general excavation by
suction dredges. These dredges cut their way into the space where the
walls in question are to be built, making a channel just wide and deep
enough for their passage. They then widened out the cut and deepened it
to 41 feet below sea level. An earthen dam was then built across the
narrow entrance cut, shutting off the connection with the sea, and as
the dredges worked they were lowered. They are now floating at an
elevation of 32 feet below sea level and can remove the material to the
depth required. After the excavation is completed it is proposed to have
the dredges excavate a sump 65 feet below sea level and lower the water
to 50 feet below sea level in order to test the stability of the sides
of the cut. If there is no sliding the pit will be filled with water;
the dredges floated out; the dam across the entrance channel replaced
and the excavation unwatered for the construction of the walls first
referred to.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM OF LOCK-GATE MACHINERY]
[Illustration: TOWING LOCOMOTIVE CLIMBING TO UPPER LOCK]
“The masonry of the Gatun locks was largely placed by cableways, having
a span of 800 feet, covering the entire space to be occupied by the
locks. The stone and sand for the concrete were obtained, respectively,
20 and 40 miles down the Caribbean coast, and were brought in barges up
the old French Canal as closely as possible to the lock site, and were
unloaded by cableways into large stock piles near the bank. The
material, however, was still 3,500 feet away and 60 feet below the
center of lock construction. This situation caused the adoption of a
central mixing plant near the central portion of the locks, consisting
of eight 2-yard mixers. An automatic, electric, loop-line railroad, each
car carrying the material for a batch of concrete, was installed,
passing under the cement shed, under the sand and stone piles; and over
the mixers. The mixed concrete was delivered to the cableways requiring
it by an electric line, the flat cars of which were handled by electric
locomotives. Steel forms were used in constructing the walls of the
locks”.
A vital feature of the locks is, of course, getting the water into and
out of them, and the method of operating the gigantic gates. The former
is simple enough of explanation, though the _modus operandi_ will be
entirely concealed when the locks are in operation. Through each of the
side walls, and through the center walls which divide the pairs of
locks, runs a tunnel 18 feet in diameter. To put it more graphically a
tunnel large enough to take a mogul locomotive of the highest type. From
this main tunnel smaller ones branch off to the floors of the locks that
are to be served, and these smaller chutes are big enough for the
passage of a farmer’s wagon with a span of horses. These smaller chutes
extend under the floor of the lock and connect with it by valved
openings, the valves being operated by electricity. There is no pumping
of the water. Each lock is filled by the natural descent of the water
from the lock above or from the lake. By the use of the great culvert in
the central wall the water can be transferred from a lock on the west
side of the flight to one on the east, or vice versa. Though it hardly
seems necessary, every possible device for the conservation of the water
supply has been provided.
We will suppose a vessel from the Atlantic reaches Gatun and begins to
climb to the lake above. The electric locomotives tow her into the first
lock, which is filled just to the level of the Canal. The great gates
close behind her.
[Illustration: THE HEAVY WHEEL SHOWN IS THE “BULL WHEEL”
By its revolution it thrusts or withdraws the arm at the right which
moves the gate]
How do they close? What unseen power forces those huge gates of steel,
shut against the dogged resistance of the water? They are 7 feet thick,
65 feet long and from 47 to 82 feet high. They weigh from 390 to 730
tons each. Add to this weight the resistance of the water and it becomes
evident that large power is needed to operate them. At Gatun in the
passing of a large ship through the locks, it will be necessary to lower
four fender chains, operate six pairs of miter gates and force them to
miter, open and close eight pairs of rising stem gate valves for the
main supply culverts, and thirty cylindrical valves. In all, no less
than 98 motors will be set in motion twice during each lockage of a
single ship, and this number may be increased to 143, dependent upon the
previous position of the gates, valves and other devices. Down under the
surface of the lock wall, packed into a little crypt which seems barely
to afford room for its revolving, is a great cogwheel 20 feet in
diameter, revolving slowly and operating a ponderous steel arm which
thrusts out or pulls back the gate as desired. The bull wheel, they call
it, is driven by a 27 horse power motor, while a smaller motor of 7¹⁄₂
horse power locks the gates tight after they are once in position. Two
of these bull wheels, and two each of the motors are needed for each
pair of gates.
[Illustration: THE TANGLED MAZE OF STEEL SKELETONS THAT ARE A LOCK IN
THE MAKING]
The ship then is in the lowest lock, one pair of gates closed tightly
behind her. Another pair confronts her holding back the water in the
lock above, which if filled, will be just 28¹⁄₃ feet above the surface
of that on which she floats. But the water about her is now slowly
rising. Another set of electric motors concealed in the concrete wall
have set in motion the valves in the floor of the lock, and the water is
flowing in from the tunnels, raising the ship and at the same time
lowering the water in the lock above. When the vessel’s keel is higher
than the sill of the lock above the upper gates swing slowly back and
fold in flat with the wall. The ship is now in a chamber 2000 feet long
filled to a level. The locomotives pull her forward a thousand feet or
so. Again great gates close behind her. Again the water rises slowly
about her lifting her with it. The first process is repeated and she
enters the third lock. By the time she has been drawn out into the lake
and the locomotives have cast her off, more than 100 electric motors
with a horse power ranging from 7¹⁄₂ to 50 each will have contributed to
her progress. Altogether over 1000 individual motors will be required
for the different locks. Indeed the whole interior of those massive lock
walls is penetrated by lighted galleries strung with insulated wires
bearing a death-dealing current. Men will be stationed at the various
machinery rooms, but the whole line of machinery can be operated from a
central operating tower on the lock above.
CHAPTER XI
GATUN LAKE AND THE CHAGRES RIVER
That section of the Canal, which for the convenience of engineering
records and directions is known as the Central Division, comprises
within its boundaries two of the great spectacular features of the
Isthmus--Gatun Lake and the Culebra Cut. I have already described the
scenic characteristics of this lake, but some discussion of the part it
plays in the economy of the Canal will not be out of place.
In the first place the creation of the lake depended on the type of
canal to be selected. A sea-level canal could not exist with the lake; a
lock canal could not have been built without it. The meanderings of the
Chagres, crossing and recrossing the only practicable line for the
Canal, and its passionate outbursts in the rainy season made it an
impossible obstacle to a sea-level canal, and all the plans for a canal
of that type contemplated damming the stream at some point above
Gatun--at Bohio, Gamboa or Alhajuela--and diverting its outflow into the
Pacific. On the other hand the lock canal could not be built without
some great reservoir of water to repeatedly fill its locks, and to
supply the waterpower whereby to operate them. Hence Gatun Lake was
essential to the type of canal we adopted.
The lay reader will probably be surprised when he hears how carefully
the area of the Chagres watershed and the average rainfall were studied,
and the height of the dam and the spillway adjusted to make certain a
sufficient supply of water for the locks. The only locks with which
these could be compared are those at the “Soo”, or outlet of Lake
Superior. That canal, the busiest one in the world for eight months in
the year, averaged 39 lockages a day during that period on the American
side and a smaller number through the Canadian locks. The water in Gatun
Lake will be sufficient for 41 passages, if the full length of the locks
is used or 58 if only the partial length is used, which will be the case
with steamships of less than 15,000 tons--and in ships of this class the
bulk of the world’s trade is conducted. If the limit of 41 lockages
seems low, it must be remembered that time is quite as much a factor in
the case as is the water supply. It will take an hour and a half to put
a ship through the locks. That time therefore technically constitutes a
“passage”. In the 24 hours there would be 36 passages possible, and
under the circumstances that would draw most heavily on the lake there
will be water enough for 41.
[Illustration: THE CHAGRES, SHOWING OBSERVER’S CAR
From the swinging car the observer measures the crest of the flood and
rapidity of the current]
For the creation of this lake our engineers found the Chagres River
available. It had dug the valley in which would be stored the vast
volume of water needed, and the unfailing flow from its broad watershed
could be relied upon at all seasons--though indeed in the rainy season
its contribution is sometimes embarrassingly lavish.
[Illustration: FLUVIOGRAPH AT BOHIO, NOW SUBMERGED]
[Illustration: AUTOMATIC FLUVIOGRAPH ON GATUN LAKE]
Every land comes to be judged largely by its rivers. Speak of Egypt and
you think of the Nile; India suggests the Ganges; England the Thames;
and France the Seine. The Chagres is as truly Panamanian as the Rhine is
German and there have been watches on the Chagres, too, when buccaneers
and revolutionists urged their cayucas along its tortuous highway. It
was the highway by which the despoilers of Peru carried their loot to
the Atlantic on the way to Spain, and along its tide drifted the later
argonauts who sought the golden fleece in California in the days of ’49.
The poet too has sung it, but not in words of praise. Listen to its most
famous lyric from the pen of James Henry Gilbert, Panama’s most famous
bard and most cruel critic.
“Beyond the Chagres River
Are the paths that lead to death--
To the fever’s deadly breezes,
To malaria’s poisonous breath!
Beyond the tropic foliage,
Where the alligator waits,
Are the mansions of the Devil--
His original estates.
“Beyond the Chagres River
Are the paths fore’er unknown,
With a spider ’neath each pebble
A scorpion ’neath each stone.
’Tis here the boa-constrictor
His fatal banquet holds,
And to his slimy bosom
His hapless guest enfolds!
“Beyond the Chagres River
’Tis said--the story’s old--
Are paths that lead to mountains
Of purest virgin gold;
But ’tis my firm conviction,
Whatever tales they tell,
That beyond the Chagres River
All paths lead straight to Hell”!
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE VILLAGE OF BOHIO, NOW SUBMERGED]
A much maligned stream is the River Chagres. Pioneers, pirates,
prospectors and poets have vied with each other in applying the
vocabulary of contumely and abuse to it, and the practitioners of
medicine have attached its name to a peculiarly depressing and virulent
type of tropical fever. But the humble native loves it dearly and his
homes, either villages of from ten to forty family huts, or mere
isolated cabins cling to its shores all the way from Fort Lorenzo to the
head waters far beyond the boundary of the Canal Zone. The native too
has something of an eye for the picturesque. Always his huts are erected
on a bluff of from 15 to 40 feet rise from the river, with the ground
cleared before them to give an unblocked view of the stream. Whether by
accident or because of a real art instinct he is very apt to choose a
point at a bend in the river with a view both up and down the stream.
Possibly however art had less to do with his choice than an instinct of
self-defense, for in the days of Isthmian turbulence, or for that matter
today, the rivers were the chief highways and it was well to be on
guard for hostile forces coming from either direction.
[Illustration: STEPS LEADING TO FLUVIOGRAPH STATION AT ALHAJUELA
This is one of the more distant stations, being ten or more miles
outside the Canal Zone]
[Illustration: A LIGHT HOUSE IN THE JUNGLE]
I saw the upper Chagres in the last days of its existence as a swirling
stream full of rapids, rushing along a narrow channel between banks
sometimes rising in limestone cliffs 60 feet high and capped by dense
tropical foliage ascending perhaps as much higher into the blue tropical
sky. The river was at its best and most picturesque as at the opening of
the dry season we poled our way up from Matachin towards its source.
Then Matachin was a hamlet of canal workers, and a weekly market for the
natives who brought thither boat loads of oranges, bananas, yams and
plantains. Sometimes they carried stranger cargoes. I heard a commission
given one native to fetch down a young tiger for somebody who wanted to
emulate Sarah Bernhardt in the choice of pets. Iguanas, the great edible
lizard of Panama, young deer, and cages of parrots or paroquets
occasionally appear. But as a market Matachin is doomed, for it is to be
submerged. With it will go an interesting discussion of the etymology of
its name, one party holding that it signifies “dead Chinamen” as being
the spot where imported Chinese coolies died in throngs of homesickness
during the construction of the Panama Railroad. But the word also means
“butcher” in Spanish and some think it commemorates some massacre of the
early days. However sanguinary its origin there will presently be water
enough to wash out all the stains of blood. In 1913 the place was one of
the principal zone villages, with large machine shops and a labor colony
exceeding 1500 in number. All vanishes before the rising lake, which
will be here a mile wide.
The native craft by which alone the Chagres could be navigated prior to
the creation of the lake are long, slender canoes fashioned usually from
the trunks of the espevé tree, hollowed out by fire and shaped within
and without with the indispensable machete. It is said that occasionally
one is hewn from a mahogany log, for the native has little idea of the
comparative value of the different kinds of timber. Mahogany and
rosewood logs worth thousands of dollars in New York are doing humble
service in native huts in Panama. But the native has a very clear
understanding of the comparative labor involved in hewing out a hardwood
log, and the cayucas are therefore mainly of the softer espevé, a
compact wood with but little grain which does not crack or splinter when
dragged roughly over the rocks of the innumerable rapids. The river
cayuca is about 25 feet along with an extreme beam of about 2¹⁄₂ feet
and a draft of 6 to 10 inches. Naturally it is crank and can tip a white
man into the stream with singular celerity, usually righting itself and
speeding swiftly away with the rushing current. But the natives tread it
as confidently as though it were a scow. For upstream propulsion long
poles are used, there being usually two men to a boat, though one man
standing in the stern of a 30-foot loaded cayuca and thrusting it
merrily up stream, through rocky rapids and swirling whirlpools is no
uncommon sight.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE RIVERSIDE MARKET AT MATACHIN]
Our craft was longer--35 feet in all, and in the official service of the
Canal commission had risen to the dignity of a coat of green paint
besides having a captain and a crew of two men. Our captain, though but
in his nineteenth year, was a person of some dignity, conveying his
orders to the crew in tones of command, though not averse to joining in
the lively badinage with which they greeted passing boatmen, or rallied
maidens, washing linen in the streams, upon their slightly concealed
charms. The corrupt Spanish they spoke made it difficult to do more than
catch the general import of these playful interchanges. Curiously enough
the native peasant has no desire to learn English, and frequently
conceals that accomplishment, if he has attained it, as though it were a
thing of which to be ashamed. This attitude is the more perplexing in
view of the fact that the commission pays more to English speaking
natives.
“This boy Manuel”, said my host to me in low tones, “understands English
and can speak it after a fashion, but rarely does so. I entrapped him
once in a brief conversation and said to him, ‘Manuel, why don’t you
speak English and get on the roll of English speaking employees? You are
getting $62.50 gold a month now; then you’d get $75 at least’.
“Manuel dropped his English at once. ‘No quiero aprender a hablar
ingles’, said he, ‘Para mi basta el español’”. (I don’t care. Spanish
good enough for me.)
[Illustration: RAILROAD BRIDGE OVER THE CHAGRES AT GAMBOA
River is at low water. For picture showing it at flood, see page 141]
Manuel indeed was the son of the alcalde of his village, and the alcalde
is a person of much power and of grandeur proportionate to the number of
thatched huts in his domain. The son bore himself as one of high lineage
and his face indeed, Caucasian in all save color, showed that Spanish
blood predominated over the universal admixture of negro. He saved his
money, spending less than $10 a month and investing the rest in horses.
[Illustration: A QUIET BEACH ON THE CHAGRES]
From Matachin up to Cruces the river is comparatively commonplace,
spanned at one point by the Gamboa bridge up at which the voyager looks
reflectively from below as he hears that when the spillway is closed and
the lake filled up there will be but 15 feet headway above the river’s
crest, where at the moment there is more than 60. Higher up are the
towers, housing the machinery for recording the river’s rise, one of
them a relic of the French régime, while a slender wire spanning the
stream carries the pendulous car in which observers will go out at flood
time to measure the height of the tide’s crest and the speed of the
current. A stream of many moods is the Chagres, sometimes rising 40 feet
in 24 hours. Accordingly along its banks and those of its principal
tributaries are fluviographic stations whence watchers may telephone to
the keepers of the flood gates of the dam warnings of the coming of any
sudden freshet.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT
THE RIVER AND VILLAGE OF CHAGRES
The little hamlet of rude thatched huts with a frame Catholic church in
the middle has seen history in its time. The Spanish fortress of San
Lorenzo on the hill was taken by Sir Henry Morgan’s buccaneers and later
by the British under Admiral Vernon after hard fighting.]
In the matter of conserving the waters of the Chagres, estimating the
total capacity of the watershed and in providing for swift forwarding of
information concerning sudden rises we shall always be under great
obligations to the French. Their hydrographic observations and records
are invaluable, and their stations established before we assumed control
are still used, with much of their machinery. Stations are maintained
far up the valleys of the Chagres and tributary rivulets, and all are
connected with the central control at Gatun dam by telephone. Some of
the stations are equipped with automatic machinery which, in the event
of a rise during the night summons the keeper by ringing an alarm bell.
The life of the keeper of a fluviograph station, miles perhaps of jungle
isolating him from the nearest human habitation, is lonesome enough. Yet
its monotony is sometimes relieved by lively incident. The irascible
Chagres, for example, once caught the keeper at Alhajuela with a sudden
rise, and compelled him to camp out a night and day in a tree top and
see his house, pigs and poultry swept away on the rushing tide. There
was a fair chance that the tree would follow.
[Illustration: POLING UP THE RAPIDS]
[Illustration: _Photo by S. H. Elliott_
CONSTRUCTION WORK ON THE SPILLWAY]
On our way up the river to visit some of the fluviographs we landed at
Cruces, went a brief space into the jungle and cleared away with
machetes the tangled vegetation until the old trail, or Royal Road to
Panama, was laid bare. Three to four feet wide or thereabouts it was,
and at points rudely paved with cobble stones. The nature and dimensions
of the trail show that it was not intended for wheeled carriages, and
indeed a native vehicle is a rarity on the Isthmus today, except in the
towns. Time came when with the growing power and cruelty of the
Spaniards this Camina Reale, or King’s Highway, was watered with the
blood of Indian slaves, bearing often their own possessions stolen from
them by the Spaniard who plied on their bent backs his bloody lash. It
may have been over this trail that Balboa carried, with incredible
labor, the frames of three ships or caravels, which he afterwards
erected and launched in the Pacific. Several years ago there were found
in the jungle near Cruces two heavy anchors, with 14-foot shafts and
weighing about 600 pounds which had been carried thus far on the way to
the Pacific and there dropped and left to the kindly burial of the
tropical jungle. When they were discovered a too loyal graduate of our
military academy at West Point in charge of some engineering work on the
Isthmus, thought it would be a fine thing to send them up there and have
them preserved on the parade ground of the academy. Without announcing
his intention he had them removed from the spot where they were found
and had taken them as far as the steamship wharf at Colon when Col.
Goethals--who has a habit of hearing of things that are not
announced--quietly interfered. The anchors were removed to some safe
spot and in due time will form part of the historic decorations of the
new city of Balboa.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
WATER GATES IN LOCK WALL
Through these gates the water is admitted to the great conduit in the
center wall of the lock]
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE LAKE ABOVE GATUN]
Doubtless by the standards of these days the wealth that was carried
back and forth along the Royal Road by men crushed low like termite ants
beneath their heavy burdens, was not great. Yet one gets some idea of
the volume of the trade from Bancroft’s statement that in the year 1624,
just four years after the landing of the Mayflower, goods to the amount
of 1,446,346 pesos d’oro (practically an equal number of dollars), were
registered at the Casa, or custom house, while probably 7¹⁄₂ millions of
dollars’ worth of goods were smuggled through. There were great
warehouses then and a stone church with a neighboring monastery to which
it was customary to send the children of the richer people at Nombre de
Dios to be kept until they had attained their seventh year. For that
piously named town was almost a plague spot and its miasmatic
atmosphere was fatal to tender infants.
The paved trail echoes no more with the muleteer’s cry, or the clatter
of hoofs, nor are there wine shops to tempt the traveler, for there are
none to be tempted. But even in its palmiest days Cruces could have been
but a dismal spot. Gage, a soldier of fortune and an itinerant preacher,
visited the village in 1638 and left us this record:
“Before ten of the clock we got to Venta de Cruces where lived none but
mulattoes and blackmores who belong unto the flat boates that
merchandize to Portobel. There I had much good entertainment by the
people who desired me to preach unto them the next Sabbath day and gave
me twenty crownes for my sermon and procession. After five days of my
abode there, the boats set out, which were much stopped in their passage
down the river, for in some places we found the water very low, so that
the boats ran upon the gravel; from whence with poles and the strength
of the blackmores they were to be lifted off again”.
After the lapse of almost four centuries we found the shallows still
there and the blackmores--or their descendants--ready to carry our boat
past their fall. But the people who paid the early traveler twenty
crowns for a sermon had vanished as irrevocably as the city’s public
edifices, and no descendants of like piety remain. Morgan’s fierce
raiders swept through the village in 1670, and its downfall may have
begun then, for the stout Protestantism of the buccaneers manifested
itself in burning Catholic churches and monasteries in intervals of the
less pious, but more pleasing, occupation of robbing the Spaniards or
torturing them to extort confessions of the hiding places of their
wealth.
[Illustration: HOW THEY GATHER AT THE RIVER]
Sir Henry Morgan, however, was not the only famous man of battles to
pass through Cruces. In 1852 a very quiet young captain in the army of
the United States, one Ulysses S. Grant, was there in command of a
company of the Fourth Regiment of Infantry, U. S. A., proceeding from
New York to San Francisco. Cholera broke out among the men and the loss
while on the Isthmus was heavy. At Cruces the men were detained for
days, the roster of the sick growing daily, while rascally contractors
who had agreed to furnish mules to the army sold them at higher prices
to private parties eager to get away from the pest hole. According to
the surgeon’s report the situation was saved by Grant, who made a new
contract and enforced it--the latter being a practice that grew on him
in later days.
[Illustration: WASHERWOMEN’S SHELTERS BY THE RIVER
For protection against the burning sun they erect small shanties of
palms]
For a brief space in the days of the gold rush to California in
1848-’54, Cruces bade fair to regain its early importance. Once the
half-way place on the trail of Spaniards marching to steal gold from the
Peruvians, and Englishmen following to rob and murder the robbers in
turn, it became the meeting place of prospectors going out to California
full of hope, and of miners returning, some laden with gold but more
bowed with disappointment. Again Cruces became the point at which people
and freights were transferred from the river to the trail, or vice
versa. But another trail reached the river’s bank at Gorgona and this
village became a considerable rival to the older and larger place higher
up stream. Here were several rambling wooden houses dignified by the
name of hotels of which no trace remains today. The whole village, a
considerable one in the spring of 1913, with a population of at least
3,000, is to be abandoned to the rising tide of Gatun Lake, and such
portions of it as escape submergence by the water will be overwhelmed by
the equally irresistible jungle.
[Illustration: A FERRY ON THE UPPER CHAGRES]
Charles T. Bidwell, an English traveler who crossed the Isthmus in 1853
by way of the Gorgona route, says of the pleasures of a sojourn in that
town, “The place contained a few stores and more drinking saloons, most
of which were kept by the ‘enterprising Yankee’. The Gorgona road to
Panama was just then open, it being passable only in the dry season, and
it was estimated that 2,000 persons had passed through this place on
their way to or from California. * * * We decided to take the Gorgona
road and arranged to have saddle mules ready in the morning to convey us
to Panama for $20 each and to pay 16¹⁄₂ cents a pound additional for the
conveyance of our luggage”. (The distance now by rail, which closely
follows the old trail is 16 miles, the fare 80 cents.) “We then went to
inspect ‘a free ball’ which had been got up with all available splendor
in honor of some feast, and here we had a rare opportunity of seeing
assembled many shades of color in the human face divine; a gorgeous
display of native jewelry and not the most happy mixture of bright
colors in the toilettes of those who claimed to be the ‘fair sex’.
Dancing however, and drinking too, seemed to be kept up with no lack of
spirit and energy to the inharmonious combination of a fiddle and a
drum; and those of the assembly whose tastes led them to quieter
pursuits had the opportunity of losing at adjoining gaming tables the
dollars they had so easily and quickly extracted from the travelers who
had had occasion to avail themselves of their services. These tables too
were kept by the enterprising Yankee. Having seen all this, and smoked
out our cigars, we sought our beds, when we found for each a shelf or
bunk in a room which our host boasted had at a push contained
twenty-five or thirty people. * * * On awakening at daylight I found a
basin and a pail of water set out in the open air on an old pianoforte,
which some traveler had probably been tempted to bring thus far on the
road”.
[Illustration: _Photo by W. T. Beyer_
THE MUCH PRIZED IGUANA
This lizard, which attains a length of five feet, is esteemed a delicacy
in Panama]
The writer goes on to say that it took a little over two days to
traverse the distance to Panama, the guides having stolen the mules they
had rented and made off during the night.
Above Cruces the banks of the Chagres begin to rise in perpendicular
limestone cliffs, perhaps 60 or 70 feet high while from their crests the
giant tropic trees, the wild fig, the Panama, the Ceiba and the sentinel
rise yet another one hundred feet into the bright blue sky. Amongst them
flash back and forth bright colored parrots and paroquets, kingfishers
like those of our northern states, only gaudier, and swallows
innumerable. Up and down the river fly heavy cormorants disturbed by the
clank of the poles among the stones of the river bottom, but not too shy
to come within 50 feet or so of our boat where, much to my satisfaction,
there is no gun. White and blue herons stand statuesque in the shallows
with now and then an aigret. Of life other than feathered one sees but
little here. A few fish leaped, but though the river was crystalline and
my guide assured me it was full of fish I saw none lurking in either
deeps or shallows. Yet he must have been right for the natives make much
of fish as an article of diet, catching them chiefly by night lines or
the unsportsmanlike practice of dynamiting the stream, which has been
prohibited by the Panama authorities, although the prohibition is but
little enforced.
Now and then an alligator slips lazily from the shore into the stream
but they are not as plentiful here as in the tidal waters of the lower
river. Occasionally, too, a shrill cry from one of our boatmen, taken up
by the other two at once, turns attention to the underbrush on the bank,
where the ungainly form of an iguana is seen scuttling for safety.
Ugliest of beasts is the iguana, a greenish, bulbous, pop-eyed
crocodile, he serves as the best possible model for a dragon to be slain
by some St. George. The Gila monster of Arizona is a veritable Venus of
reptiles in comparison to him, and the devil fish could give him no
lessons in repulsiveness. Yet the Panamanian loves him dearly as a dish.
Let one scurry across the road, or, dropping from a bough, walk on the
surface of a river--as they literally do--and every dark-skinned native
in sight will set up such a shout as we may fancy rose from oldtime
revellers when the boar’s head was brought in for the Yuletide feast.
Not more does the Mississippi darkey love his possum an’ sweet ’taters,
the Chinaman his bird’s nest soup and watermelon seeds, the Frenchman
his absinthe or the German his beer than does the Panamanian his iguana.
[Illustration: CRUCES--A LITTLE TOWN WITH A LONG HISTORY]
In a mild way the Chagres may lay claim to being a scenic stream, and
perhaps in future days when the excellence of its climate in the winter
becomes known in our United States, and the back waters of the lake have
made its upper reaches navigable, excursion launches may ply above
Cruces and almost to Alhajuela. Near the latter point is a spot which
should become a shrine for Progressive Republican pilgrims. A low cliff
of white limestone, swept clear of vegetation and polished by the river
at high water describes an arc of a circle hollowed out by the swift
river which rushes underneath. Springs on the bluff above have sent out
little rivulets which trickling down the face of the stone have scarred
it with parallel vertical grooves a foot or two apart. Seen from the
further side of the stream it bears a startling likeness to a huge human
upper jaw with glistening teeth. With a fine sense of the fitness of
things the river men have named it “Boca del Roosevelt”--Roosevelt’s
mouth.
[Illustration: A NATIVE CHARCOAL BURNER]
Some of the fluviograph stations are located far beyond the limits of
the Canal Zone, but by the terms of the treaty with the Republic of
Panama the Canal Commission has over such headwaters and reaches of the
Chagres such jurisdiction as may be necessary for the protection and
regulation of Gatun Lake. We went to one of these stations some 20 miles
of poling up the Chagres beyond Alhajuela. The keeper was a native of
the Canary Islands who had mastered English sufficiently to make his
reports over the ’phone. His wife, who greeted us in starched cotton
with a pink hair ribbon, pink shoes and a wealth of silver ornaments,
was a native, dark of complexion as a Jamaica negress, but her sister
who was there on a visit was as white as a Caucasian. Doctors on the
Zone say that these curious variations in type in the same family are so
common that they can never foretell within several shades, the
complexion of a baby about to be born.
The keeper of this station was paid $65.50 monthly and the Commission
supplied his house, which was of the native type and cost about $85.
Though many children, pickaninnies, little Canaries or whatever
clustered about his door, his living expenses were practically nothing.
Expense for clothing began only when the youngsters had reached 11 or 12
years of age and thereafter was almost negligible--as indeed were the
clothes. The river furnished fish, the jungle iguanas, wild pigs and
birds; the little garden patch yams, bananas, mangoes and other fruits.
He was far removed from the temptations of Matachin, or other riotous
market places and he saved practically all of his pay. His ambition was
to get enough to return to his native isles, buy a wine-shop and settle
down to a leisurely old age--though no occupation could much outdo for
laziness the task of watching for the rising of the Chagres in the dry
season.
[Illustration: THE NATIVES’ AFTERNOON TEA]
Returning from the upper waters of the Chagres one reaches Gatun Lake at
Gamboa where the railway bridge crosses on seven stone piers. A little
above is a fluviograph station fitted with a wire cable extending across
the stream and carrying a car from which an observer may take
measurements of the crest of any flood. Indeed the river is watched and
measured to its very sources. It long ago proved itself unfit for trust,
and one who has seen it in flood time, 40 feet higher than normal,
bearing on its angry, tawny bosom houses, great trees, cayucas stolen
from their owners, and dead animals, sweeping away bluffs at bends and
rolling great boulders along its banks, will readily understand why the
builders of the Canal stationed scouts and spies throughout the Chagres
territory to send ample and early warning of its coming wrath.
Leaving the Chagres, turning into Gatun Lake and directing our course
away from the dam and toward the Pacific end of the Canal, we traversed
a broad and placid body of water interspersed with densely wooded
islands, which very soon narrows to the normal width of the Canal. In
midsummer, 1913, when the author conducted his inspection, a broad dyke
at Bas Obispo cut off Gatun Lake and its waters from the Canal trench,
then dry, which here extends in an almost straight line, 300 feet wide,
through steadily rising banks to the continental divide at Culebra. The
railroad then crossed upon this dyke to the western side of the Canal
and passed through several construction towns and villages, abandoned
later when the Canal was filled and the railroad moved to the other
side. Tourists with an eye for the spectacular used to stand on this
dyke and speculate upon the thrilling sight when a huge blast of
dynamite should rend the barrier, and in a mighty wave the waters of
Gatun Lake should rush down the broad channel betwixt the eternal hills
to make at last the long desired waterway from Orient to Occident. But
unhappily Col. Goethals and his associates unsentimentally put the
picturesque aside for the practical. No dynamite blast, no surging
charge of waters through the cut, entered into their program. Instead
with mighty siphons the water was to be lifted over the barrier and
poured into the Canal for days until the two bodies of water were nearly
at a level. Then by the prosaic use of floating dredges the dyke would
be removed and the Canal opened from Gatun Locks to the locks at Pedro
Miguel.
[Illustration: PIERS OF THE ABANDONED PANAMA RAILWAY]
CHAPTER XII
THE CULEBRA CUT.
Technically what is known as the Culebra Cut extends from Bas Obispo to
the locks at Pedro Miguel, a distance of nine miles. To the general
public understanding, however, the term applies only to the point of
greatest excavation between Gold Hill and Contractor’s Hill. But at Bas
Obispo the walls of the Canal for the first time rise above the water
level of Gatun Lake. At that point the cutting begins, the walls rising
higher and higher, the Canal pressing stubbornly onward at a dead level,
until the supreme height of the continental divide is attained at Gold
Hill. Thenceforward on the line toward Panama City the hills grow lower
until at the entrance to the locks at Pedro Miguel the banks sink
practically to the water level. Out of this nine mile stretch there had
been taken up to January 1, 1913, just 88,531,237 cubic yards of
material and it was then estimated that there then remained to be
excavated 5,351,419 cubic yards more. But the later estimate was
destined to be largely increased for, after the date at which it was
made, the number and extent of “slides” in the deepest part of the cut
increased to staggering proportions. Col. D. D. Gaillard, Member of the
Commission and Division Engineer in charge of the Culebra Cut, estimated
in 1912 that in all 115,000,000 cubic yards would have to be removed.
To the general public the slides seemed to menace the very existence and
practicability of the Canal, though the engineers knew that they began
even with the superficial excavating done by the French, and had
therefore made allowance for them in their estimates. Not sufficient
allowance however was made, and as month after month brought tidings of
new slides, with terrifying details of such incidents as whole forests
moving, vast cracks opening in the earth, large buildings in imminent
danger of being swept into the Cut, the bottom of the Canal mysteriously
rising ten to fifteen feet in the air, while smoke oozed from the pores
of the adjacent earth--when such direful reports filled the newspapers
the public became nervous, almost abandoning hope of the success of the
great enterprise.
[Illustration: WORKING ON THREE LEVELS]
This attitude of apprehension on the part of the public is scarcely
surprising. If the Capitol Park at Washington, with the National Capitol
cresting it, should suddenly begin to move down into Pennsylvania Avenue
at the rate of about three feet a day the authorities of the city would
naturally feel some degree of annoyance. And if the smooth and level
asphalt of that historic thoroughfare should, over night, rise up into
the air 18 feet in spots those responsible for traffic might not
unreasonably be somewhat worried.
Such a phenomenon would not be so startling in mere magnitude as the
slides which added so greatly to the work of the engineers on the Canal,
and made tourists, wise with the ripe fruits of five days’ observation,
wag their heads knowingly when Col. Goethals calmly repeated his
assertion that the water would be turned in by August. The Colonel,
however, had not withdrawn or even modified this prophecy so late as
June 10, 1913. Despite the almost daily news of increased activity of
the slides he clung with tenacity to his purpose of putting a ship
through in October.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of Scientific American_
THE ORIGINAL CULEBRA SLIDE
A Y. M. C. A. club had to be moved to escape this slide which in 1913
was still moving]
If these slides were an entirely new and unexpected development for
which no allowance of either time or money had been made in the
estimates of the Canal builders they would of course justify the
apprehension they have awakened in the non-professional mind. But the
slides were in fact anticipated. The first slide recorded during our
work on the Isthmus was in 1905; the others have only been bigger, and
have been bigger only because the Canal being dug deeper has weakened
the bases of even bigger hills along the banks. All the same, the
proportions of the slides are terrifying and the chief geologist
declared that they would not cease until the angle of the Canal bank
became so gentle that gravity would not pull the crest down.
The slides are of two sorts. The simpler is a mere swift rush of all the
loose surface dirt, sand, gravel and stone down the surface of the bank.
These gravity slides, mere dirt avalanches, though troublesome, present
no new problems. To stop them it is necessary only to carry the crest of
the bank further back so that the angle will be less steep. But the
great, troublesome slides are those caused by the pressure of the
hill-top on its undermined and weakened base. These originate at the top
of the hill, making their presence known by gaping fissures opening in
the earth and extending in lines roughly parallel to the Canal. Once
started the whole mass, acres in extent, moves slowly toward the cavity
of the Canal, three feet a day being its swiftest recorded progress. At
Culebra the slides compelled the moving of a large part of the town away
from the edge of the Cut, lest it be swept into the gorge. The Culebra
Y. M. C. A. clubhouse, the largest on the Zone had to be torn down to
escape this peril.
As the slide moves slowly downward, its colossal weight applied at
points where nature had made no provision for it, forces the earth
upward at the point where it can offer the least resistance, namely the
bed of the Canal. Sometimes this upheaval, so mysterious to the
non-technical mind, attains a height of eighteen feet. Again, the
friction of this huge mass of stone and gravel creates heat, which turns
into steam the rills of water that everywhere percolates through the
soil. The upheaval of the Canal bed, and the occasional outpourings of
steam have led at times to exaggerated and wholly unfounded reports in
the newspapers of volcanic action being one of the new problems with
which the Canal builders had to grapple.
The story told about the extent of the slides is sufficiently alarming,
but the calmness with which Col. Goethals and his lieutenants meet the
situation is reassuring. According to the official report there were
twenty-six slides and breaks in Culebra Cut to January 1, 1913 with a
total area of 225 acres. Since that date many others have occurred. It
is estimated that because of slides between 21,000,000 and 22,000,000
cubic yards of material in excess of the original estimate will have
been taken out of the Cut before completion. This is just about
one-fifth of the total amount of excavation, dry and wet, estimated
originally for the whole Canal. But the attitude of the engineers toward
this addition to their labors was merely one of calm acceptance of the
inevitable and a dogged determination to get the stuff out of the way.
The slides were an obstacle; so was the whole isthmus for that matter.
But all that was necessary was to keep the shovels working and the
slides would be removed and the isthmus pierced.
To my mind one of the finest evidences of the spirit animating the Canal
force was the fashion in which this problem of the slides has been
approached. It was at first disappointing, almost demoralizing, to find
over night the work of weeks undone and the day when “finis” could be
written to the volume put far over into the future. But the only effect
was a tighter grip on the pick and the shovel, a new determination to
force through the Canal. Culebra was approached as Grant approached
Vicksburg. To reduce it and to open the Canal to traffic, as Grant
opened the Mississippi to the steamboats of the nation, took more time
than was at first expected, but it had to be done. The dirt could not
always slide in faster than it could be carted out, for in time there
would be no dirt left to slide. And so, undismayed and intent upon
success, the whole force from Col. Goethals to the youngest engineer
moved on Culebra and the doom of that stubborn block to progress was
sealed.
[Illustration: SLIDE ON WEST BANK OF THE CANAL NEAR CULEBRA
Picture shows about 1,000,000 cubic yards of material moving toward the
cut at about three yards a day]
To the unscientific mind the slides are terrifying in their magnitude
and in the evidence they give of irresistible force. Man can no more
check their advance than he can that of a glacier which in a way they
resemble. When I was on the Isthmus the great Cucaracha slide was in
progress, and had been for that matter since 1907. It had a total area
of 47 acres and extended up the east bank of the Canal for about 1900
feet from the axis of the Canal. When it began its progress was
disconcertingly rapid. Its base, foot, or “toe”--these anatomical terms
in engineering are sometimes perplexing--moved across the canal bed at
the rate of 14 feet a day. All that stood in its path was buried, torn
to pieces or carried along with the resistless glacier of mud. Not
content with filling the Canal from one side to the other, the dirt rose
on the further side to a height of about 30 feet. Not only was the work
of months obliterated, but work was laid out for years to come. Indeed
in 1913 they were still digging at the Cucaracha slide and the end was
not in sight. This slide was wholly a gravity slide, caused by a mass of
earth slipping on the inclined surface of some smooth and slippery
material like clay on which it rests. The nature of the phenomenon is
clearly shown by the diagram printed on the next page in which the slide
marked C is of the type just described.
[Illustration: ATTACKING THE CUCARACHA SLIDE
This slide has filled the Cut from side to side. A partial Cut has been
dug through its center and the shovels are seen working on either side.
The tracks are moved nightly as the material is removed.]
On the west bank of the Canal occurred a slide of the second type caused
by the crushing and squeezing out of underlying layers of soft material
by the prodigious pressure of the high banks left untouched by the steam
shovels. This slide is usually accompanied by the uprising of the bed of
the Canal sometimes to a height of thirty feet. Col. Gaillard tells of
standing on the bed of the Canal, observing the working of a steam
shovel, when it gradually dawned upon him that he was no longer on the
level of the shovel. At first he thought that the shovel must have been
placed upon a bit of boggy land and was slowly sinking, but on
investigation he discovered that the point on which he was standing had
been slowly rising until within five minutes he had been lifted six feet
without jar and with no sensation of motion. A perfectly simple
illustration of the way in which this elevation of the bed of the Canal
is caused may be obtained by pressing the hand upon a pan of dough. The
dough will of course rise at the side of the hand. On the “big job” the
towering hills furnished the pressure, the bed of the Canal rose like
the dough. In the diagram already referred to, the slide to the right
marked “B” is of the type here described. To cope with it, the work of
the shovels and dirt trains in the Canal carrying the débris away is
supplemented by others above removing the crest of the slide and thus
lightening the pressure. In the diagram shovels are shown thus working
on two levels, but I have seen four terraces of the same slide bearing
steam shovels and rumbling dirt trains hurrying the débris away to where
it will no longer be a menace.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM OF CULEBRA CUT SLIDES
C. is a slide moving over a slippery surface; the mass B breaks on a
line of cleavage and crushes the underlying material, forcing it up at
A. The steam shovels are working to reduce pressure on B]
[Illustration: _Courtesy of Scientific American_
A ROCK SLIDE NEAR EMPIRE
About 400,000 cubic yards of rock broke away, half filling the cut and
opening it to the water of the Obispo Diversion Canal]
The Culebra slide possessed a certain remorselessness which was not
manifested by any of the others in quite so picturesque a way. For this
slide, with apparently human malice, attacked not only the work done on
the Canal proper, but like a well directed army moved on the
headquarters of its foe. Its first manifestation appeared in the form of
a wide crack in the earth at the crest of the hill on which sits the
town of Culebra, and directly in front of the building used by Col.
Gaillard as division headquarters for the engineers. Retreat was the
only course possible in the face of such an enemy and the building was
sacrificed. The Culebra Y. M. C. A. clubhouse too was a point of attack
for the remorseless foe. It stood on the very crest of the hill, a
beautiful building on a most beautiful site. The serpent of Culebra
Cut--the word “culebra” means snake--saw this pleasant place of rest and
marked it for his own. Nothing remained but to rally a force of men and
tear the building down for reërection at some other point. It was
probably the largest and most attractive clubhouse on the Zone, but
where it once stood there was a nearly sheer drop of about sixty feet,
when first I visited the scene of the slide. Before the spot, too, on
which the engineering headquarters had stood, there was a patch of lawn
that had slid some eighty feet down into the Cut. With it traveled along
a young eucalyptus tree waving its leaves defiantly in the face of the
enemy that was bearing it to irrevocable disaster. Whether the Culebra
slide had attained its fullest proportions in 1913 could not be told
with certainty though the belief was current that it had. While the
crest of the hill had not been fully reached, the top of the slide began
at the edge of a sort of jog or terrace that extended away from the Cut
some distance on a level before the ground began to slope upward again.
Should it extend further a very considerable and beautiful part of the
town would be destroyed, but as it is to be abandoned in any event on
the completion of the Canal, this phase of the matter does not give the
Commission much concern.
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR AT CULEBRA CUT]
[Illustration: CUTTING AT BASE OF CONTRACTORS HILL
This shows the point at which the Cut is deepest. The actual level of
canal bed was not reached at the time this photograph was taken]
A third slide, of lesser proportions which seriously complicated the
work of the engineers, occurred near Empire in August, 1912. Here about
400,000 cubic yards of rock slipped into the Cut, wrecking cars,
destroying tracks and machinery and flooding the Canal with water from
the Obispo diversion. It is not generally known that parallel to the
Canal at various points are dug smaller canals, or big ditches, for the
purpose of catching and carrying off the heavy annual rainfall on the
canal watershed. These diversion ditches cost much in time and labor.
One was constructed by the French. Another, 5¹⁄₄ miles long, known as
the Obispo diversion, cost $1,250,000 and was absolutely essential to
the construction of the Canal. The rock slide, above referred to, broke
down the barrier between the Canal cut and the diversion ditch and
filled the former with an untimely flood which it took time to stay and
pump out.
[Illustration: A ROCK SLIDE AT LAS CASCADES
A steam shovel was wholly demolished but its operators escaped. The
slides have seldom cost lives]
From all parts of the United States citizens interested in the progress
of the Canal--and only those at the work can tell how widespread and
patriotic that interest is--have sent suggestions for checking these
slides. Practically all have been impracticable--a few only indeed have
been thought worthy of being put to the test. One that for a time seemed
worth trying was the suggestion that the wall of the cut be plastered
with concrete, binding its surface together in a solid mass. But upon
that being done it was demonstrated that the slides were not superficial
but basic, and concrete face and all went down to one general
destruction when the movement began. One curious fact about the slides
is that they do not invariably slide _down_ throughout their entire
course. Occasionally they take a turn upward. One tree at Cucaracha was
pointed out to me which after moving majestically down for a space was
carried upward over a slope for 100 feet, and then having passed the
crest of the hill started down again.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
SLICING OFF THE CHIEF ENGINEER’S OFFICE]
The slides are by no means wholly in the wet season despite the popular
impression to that effect, though it was in the height of that season
that the one at Cucaracha began. Yet I have seen a slide moving slowly
in January when the shovels digging fiercely at its base were enshrouded
in clouds of dust. Curiously enough though tracks have been torn up,
machinery engulfed and wrung into indistinguishable tangles of steel, no
man was caught in any of these avalanches prior to May, 1913, when three
were thus lost. The tax they have put upon time and labor however has
been heavy enough. Within the 8⁴⁄₅ miles of the Culebra Cut fully 200
miles of track have been covered up, destroyed or necessarily rebuilt
because of slides, and at one point tracks had to be maintained for
nearly two years on ground moving from three or four inches to several
feet a day. Of course this necessitated the constant work of repair
gangs and track layers. When the Canal is completed nearly 22% of the
excavation will have been of material put in the way by slides--a fact
which seems to give some belated support to the prophecy of the early
Spanish theologians that God would not permit the Isthmus to be pierced,
but would array new and unexpected forces against so blasphemous an
effort to interfere with His perfect work.
One feature of the slides which would surely have awed the pious
prophets of the Spanish day, and which did indeed considerably perplex
our more prosaic engineers, was the little wisps of smoke that arose
from the slowly moving soil. That this was volcanic few believed, except
some newspaper correspondents in eager search for sensations. The true
explanation that heat generated by friction working upon the water in
the earth caused the steam was all very well and complete as an
explanation of that particular phenomenon. But it left a certain
worried feeling in the minds of the men who spent their days in putting
hundreds of plugs of dynamite into holes drilled in the rock which the
scientists declared superheated. Dropping a dynamite cartridge into a
red-hot rock is apt to create a menace to the continued life and health
of the dropper which even the excellent sanitary brigade of Col. Gorgas
could scarcely control successfully. For a time there was a halt in the
blasting operations and indeed two blasts were fired prematurely by this
natural heat, but fortunately without loss of life. Finally the scheme
was devised of thrusting an iron pipe into the drill hole and leaving it
there a few minutes. If it was cool to the touch on withdrawal all was
well; if hot a stream of water was kept playing in the hole while the
charge was inserted and tamped down.
Dynamite has been man’s most useful slave in this great work, but like
all slaves it now and then rises in fierce and murderous revolt. “Though
during the past three and one-quarter years, in work under the writer’s
charge”, writes Col. Gaillard, “over 20,000,000 pounds of dynamite were
used in blasting, but eight men have been killed, three of whom failed
to go to a safe distance and were killed by flying stones, and two by
miscounting the number of shots which had gone off in a ‘dobe’ group,
and approaching the group before the last shot had exploded”.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
HOW TOURISTS SEE THE CUT
The picture shows Vincent Astor’s party in the observation car]
Something like 12,000,000 pounds of dynamite a year was imported from
“the states” to keep the job going, over 6,000,000 pounds a year being
used in Culebra Cut alone, and many an unsuspecting passenger danced
over the tossing Atlantic waves with a cargo beneath him explosive
enough to blow him to the moon. On the Zone the stuff is handled with
all the care that long familiarity has shown to be necessary, but to the
uninitiated it looks careless enough. It is however a fact that the
accidents are continually lessening in number and in fatalities caused.
The greatest accident of all occurred December 12, 1908, when we had
been only four years on the job. It was at Bas Obispo, and in order to
throw over the face of a hill of rock that rose from the west bank of
the Canal at that point nearly 44,000 pounds of dynamite had been neatly
tamped away in the holes drilled for that purpose. Actually the last
hole of this prodigious battery was being tamped when it exploded and
set off all the others. A colossal concussion shook all the face of the
earth. The side of the hill vanished in a cloud of smoke and dust from
which flying rocks and trees rose into the air. When the roar of the
explosion died away cries of anguish rose on the trembling air. About
the scene of the explosion an army of men had been working, and of these
26 had been killed outright and a host more wounded. No such disaster
has ever occurred again though there have been several small ones, and
many narrow escapes from large ones.
Once a steam shovel taking its accustomed bite of four or five cubic
yards of dirt, engulfed at the same time about a bushel of dynamite left
from the French days. Again the teeth of a shovel bit upon the fulminate
cap of a forgotten charge. In both these cases the miraculous happened
and no explosion occurred. When one reads in the Official Handbook
issued by the Commission that a pound of dynamite has been used to about
every two cubic yards of material blasted, and compares it with the
total excavation of about 200,000,000 cubic yards one thinks that even
the undoubted sins of the Isthmus during its riotous days are expiated
by such a vigorous blowing up.
[Illustration: JAMAICANS OPERATING A COMPRESSED AIR DRILL]
One day at Matachin an engineer with whom I was talking called a
Spaniard and sent him off on an errand. I noticed the man walked queerly
and commented on it. “It’s a wonder that fellow walks at all”, said my
friend with a laugh. “He was sitting on a ledge once when a blast below
went off prematurely and Miguel, with three or four other men, and a few
tons of rock, dirt and other débris went up into the air. He was
literally blown at least 80 feet high. The other men were killed, but we
found signs of life in him and shipped him to the hospital where he
stayed nearly eight months. I’d hesitate to tell you how many bones were
broken, but I think the spine was the only one not fractured and that
was dislocated. His job is safe for the rest of his life. He loves to
tell about it. Wait ’till he gets back and I’ll ask him”.
[Illustration: HANDLING ROCK IN ANCON QUARRY]
Presently Miguel returned, sideways like a crab, but with agility all
the same. “Tell the gentleman how it feels to be blown up”, said the
engineer.
“Caramba! I seet on ze aidge of ze cut, smoke my pipe, watch ze work
when--Boom! I fly up in air, up, up! I stop. It seem I stop long time. I
see ozzair sings fly up past me. I start down--I breathe smoke, sand.
Bang! I hit ground. When I wake I in bed at hospital. Can’t move. Same
as dead”!
“Miguel never fails to lay stress on the time he stopped before
beginning his descent”, comments my friend, “and on the calmness with
which he viewed the prospect, particularly the other things going up.
His chief sorrow is that no moving picture man took the incident”.
Incidents of heroic self-sacrifice are not unknown among the dynamite
handlers. Here is the story of Angel Alvarez, an humble worker on the
Big Job. He was getting ready a surface blast of dynamite and all around
him men were working in calm assurance that he would notify them before
the explosion. Happening to glance up he saw a great boulder just
starting to slip down the cut into the pit where he stood with two open
boxes of dynamite. He knew that disaster impended. He could have jumped
from the pit and run, saving himself but sacrificing his comrades.
Instead he shouted a frantic warning, and seizing the two boxes of
dynamite thrust them aside out of the way of the falling boulder. There
was no hope for him. The rock would have crushed him in any event. But
one stick of dynamite fell from one of the boxes and was
exploded--though the colossal explosion that might have occurred was
averted. They thought that Alvarez was broken to bits when they gathered
him up, but the surgeons patched him up, and made a kind of a man out of
him. Not very shapely or vigorous is Angel Alvarez now but in a sense he
carries the lives of twenty men he saved in that moment of swift
decision.
The visitor to the Cut during the period of construction found two types
of drills, the tripod and the well, busily preparing the chambers for
the reception of the dynamite. Of the former there were 221 in use, of
the latter 156. With this battery over 90 miles of holes have been
excavated in a month, each hole being about 27 feet deep. The drills are
operated by compressed air supplied from a main running the length of
the Cut and are in batteries of three to eight manned by Jamaica negroes
who look as if the business of standing by and watching the drill
automatically eat its way into the rock heartily agreed with their
conception of the right sort of work.
[Illustration: IN THE CUCARACHA SLIDE]
He who did not see the Culebra Cut during the mighty work of excavation
missed one of the great spectacles of the ages--a sight that at no other
time, or place was, or will be, given to man to see. How it was best
seen many visits left me unable to determine. From its crest on a
working day you looked down upon a mighty rift in the earth’s crust, at
the base of which pigmy engines and ant-like forms were rushing to and
fro without seeming plan or reason. Through the murky atmosphere strange
sounds rose up and smote the ear of the onlooker with resounding clamor.
He heard the strident clink, clink of the drills eating their way into
the rock; the shrill whistles of the locomotives giving warning of some
small blast, for the great charges were set off out of working hours
when the Cut was empty; the constant and uninterrupted rumble that told
of the dirt trains ever plying over the crowded tracks; the heavy crash
that accompanied the dumping of a six-ton boulder onto a flat car; the
clanking of chains and the creaking of machinery as the arms of the
steam shovels swung around looking for another load; the cries of men,
and the booming of blasts. Collectively the sounds were harsh,
deafening, brutal such as we might fancy would arise from hell were the
lid of that place of fire and torment to be lifted.
But individually each sound betokened useful work and service in the
cause of man and progress as truly as could the musical tinkle of cow
bells, the murmur of water over a village millwheel, or the rude melody
of the sailors’ songs as they trim the yards for the voyage to the
distant isles of spice. The hum of industry that the poets have loved to
tell about loses nothing of its significance when from a hum it rises to
a roar. Only not all the poets can catch the meaning of its new note.
[Illustration: BROW OF GOLD HILL, CULEBRA CUT]
So much for the sounds of the Culebra Cut on a work day. The sights are
yet more wonderful. One who has looked upon the Grand Canyon of the
Colorado will find in this man-made gash in the hills something of the
riot of color that characterizes that greatest of natural wonders, but
he who has had no such preparation will stand amazed before the barbaric
wealth of hues which blaze forth from these precipitous walls. Reds
predominate--red of as deep a crimson as though Mother Earth’s bosom
thus cruelly slashed and scarred was giving up its very life’s blood;
red shading into orange, tropical, hot, riotous, pulsing like the life
of the old Isthmus that is being carved away to make place for the new;
red, pale, pinkish, shading down almost to rose color as delicate as the
hue on a maiden’s cheek, typifying perhaps the first blush of the bride
in the wedding of the Atlantic to the Pacific. Yellow too from the
brightest orange to the palest ochre, and blue from the shade of indigo
which Columbus hoped to bring across this very Isthmus from the bazaars
of Cathay; purple as royal as Ferdinand and Isabella ever wore, or the
paler shades of the tropic sky are there. As you look upon the dazzling
array strung out before you for miles you may reflect that imbedded in
those parti-colored rocks and clays are semi-precious stones of varied
shades and sorts--beryls, moss agates, bloodstones, moonstones which the
workmen pick up and sell to rude lapidaries who cut and sell them to
tourists. But in all this colossal tearing up of the earth’s surface
there has been found none of the gold for which the first white men
lusted, nor any precious stone or useful mineral whatsoever.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
A DIRT-SPREADER AT WORK]
[Illustration: “EVERY BITE RECORDED AT HEADQUARTERS”]
Again I looked on the Cut from above one morning before the breeze that
blows across the Isthmus from nine o’clock in the morning until sundown,
had driven out of it the mists of early dawn. From unseen depths filled
with billowy vapor rose the clatter of strenuous toil by men and
machines, softened somewhat by the fleecy material through which they
penetrated. Of the workers no sign appeared until the growing heat of
the sun and the freshening breeze began to sweep the Cut clear in its
higher reaches, and there on the topmost terrace of Gold Hill, half a
mile across the abyss from where I stood, was revealed a monster steam
shovel digging away at the crest of the hill to lighten the weight that
was crowding acres upon acres of broken soil into the canal below. It
seemed like a mechanical device on some gigantic stage, as with
noiseless ferocity it burrowed into the hillside, then shaking and
trembling with the effort swung back its long arm and disgorged its huge
mouthful on the waiting flat cars. The curtain of mist was slowly
disappearing. From my lofty eyrie on an outjutting point of Contractor’s
Hill it seemed as if the stage was being displayed, not by the lifting
of a curtain, but rather by the withdrawal of a shield downward so that
the higher scenery became first visible. One by one the terraces cut
into the lofty hillsides were exposed to view, each with its line of
tugging steam shovels and its rows of motionless empty cars, or rolling
filled ones rumbling away to the distant dump. Now and again a sudden
eruption of stones and dirt above the shield of fog followed in a few
seconds by a dull boom told of some blast. So dense was the mist that
one marvelled how in that narrow lane below, filled with railroad
tracks, and with busy trains rushing back and forth men could work save
at imminent danger of disaster. Death lurked there at all times and the
gray covering of fog was more than once in the truest sense a pall for
some poor mutilated human frame.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
A LIDGERWOOD UNLOADER AT WORK]
Perhaps the most impressive view of the Cut in the days of its activity
was that from above. It was the one which gave the broadest general
sense of the prodigious proportions of the work. But a more terrifying
one, as well as a more precise comprehension of the infinity of detail
coupled with the magnitude of scope of the work was to be obtained by
plodding on foot through the five miles where the battle of Culebra was
being most fiercely fought. The powers that be--or that were--did not
encourage this method of observation. They preferred to send visitors
through this Death’s Lane, this confusing network of busy tracks, in an
observation car built for the purpose, or in one of the trim little
motor cars built to run on the railroad tracks for the use of officials.
From the fact that one of the latter bore the somewhat significant
nickname “The Yellow Peril” and from stories of accidents which had
occurred to occupants of these little scouts among the mighty engines of
war, I am inclined to think that the journey on foot, if more wearisome,
was not more perilous.
[Illustration: THE TRACK SHIFTER IN ACTION]
Put on then a suit of khaki with stout shoes and take the train for
Culebra. That will be as good a spot as any to descend into the Cut, and
we will find there some airy rows of perpendicular ladders connecting
the various levels up and down which an agile monkey, or Col. Gaillard
or any of his assistants, can run with ease, but which we descend with
infinite caution and some measure of nervous apprehension. Probably the
first sound that will greet your ears above the general clatter, when
you have attained the floor of the Canal will be a stentorian cry of
“Look out, there! Look out”! You will hear that warning hail many a time
and oft in the forenoon’s walk we are about to take. I don’t know of any
spot where Edward Everett Hale’s motto, “Look Out and Not In; Look Up
and Not Down; Look Forward and Not Back” needs editing more than at
Culebra. The wise man looked all those ways and then some. For trains
are bearing down upon you from all directions and so close are the
tracks and so numerous the switches that it is impossible to tell the
zone of safety except by observing the trains themselves. If your gaze
is too intently fixed on one point a warning cry may call your attention
to the arm of a steam shovel above your head with a five-ton boulder
insecurely balanced, or a big, black Jamaican a few yards ahead
perfunctorily waving a red flag in token that a “dobe” blast is to be
fired. A “dobe” blast is regarded with contempt by the fellows who
explode a few tons of dynamite at a time and demolish a whole hillside,
but the “dobes” throw fifty to one hundred pound stones about in a
reckless way that compels unprofessional respect. They tell a story on
the Zone of a negro who, not thinking himself in range, was sitting on a
box of dynamite calmly smoking a cigarette. A heavy stone dropped
squarely on his head killing him instantly, but was sufficiently
deflected by the hardness of the Ethiopian skull to miss the box on
which the victim sat. Had it been otherwise the neighboring landscape
and its population would have been materially changed.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE COLONEL’S TROUBLES
This shovel was overwhelmed by a slide. The accident is not uncommon]
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE SLICED-OFF HILL AT ANCON]
It is no wonder that we have trains to dodge during the course of our
stroll. There are at the moment of our visit 115 locomotives and 2000
cars in service in the Cut. About 160 loaded trains go out daily, and,
of course about 160 return empty. Three hundred and twenty trains in the
eight-hour day, with two hours’ intermission at noon, means almost one
train a minute speeding through a right of way 300 feet wide and much
cluttered up with shovels, drills and other machinery. In March, 1911,
the record month, these trains handled 1,728,748 cubic yards of
material, carrying all to the dumps which average 12 miles distant, the
farthest one being 33 miles. The lay mind does not at first think of
it, but it is a fact that it was no easy task to select spots for all
this refuse in a territory only 436 square miles in area, of which 164
square miles is covered by Gatun Lake and much of the rest is higher
than the Cut and therefore unsuited for dumps. The amount of material
disposed of would create new land worth untold millions could it have
been dumped along the lake front of Chicago, or in the Hackensack
meadows near New York.
[Illustration: _Photo by S. H. Elliott_
A LOCK-CHAMBER FROM ABOVE]
To load these busy trains there were in the Cut in its busiest days 43
steam shovels mainly of the type that would take five cubic yards of
material at a bite. One load for each of these shovels weighed 8.7 tons
of rock, 6.7 tons of earth, or 8.03 tons of the “run of the Cut”--the
mixed candy of the Culebra shop. March 11, 1911, was the record day for
work on the Central Division of which the Cut is the largest component
part. That day 333 loaded trains were run out and as many in, and 51
steam shovels and 2 cranes with orange peel buckets excavated 127,742
tons of material. It was no day for nervous tourists to go sightseeing
in the Cut.
[Illustration: WHEN THE OBISPO BROKE IN]
Let us watch one of the steam shovels at work. You will notice first
that it requires two railroad tracks for its operation--the one on which
it stands and one by the side on which are the flat cars it is to load.
If the material in which it is to work is clay or sand, the shovel track
is run close to the side of the hill to be cut away; otherwise the
blasters will have preceded it and a great pile of broken rock lies by
the side of the track or covering it before the shovel. Perched on a
seat which revolves with the swinging arm a man guides the great steel
jaws to the point of excavation. A tug at one lever and the jaws begin
to bite into the clay, or root around in the rock pile until the toothed
scoops have filled the great shovel that, closed, is rather bigger than
a boarding house hall bedroom. A tug at another lever and they close. A
third lever causes the arm to swing until it comes to a stop above the
flat car, then with a roar and a clatter the whole load is dumped.
Perhaps then the trouble is just beginning. Once in a while a boulder of
irregular shape rolls about threatening to fall to the ground. With
almost human intelligence the great rigid arm of the shovel follows it,
checking it as it approaches the edge of the car, pushing it back,
buttressing it with other stones, so that when the train gets under way
it may by no chance fall off. Sometimes you see all this done from a
point at which the directing man is invisible and the effect is uncanny.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
UNGAINLY MONSTERS OF STEEL WORKING WITH HUMAN SKILL]
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT
THE CULEBRA CUT
Dazzling colors combined with its colossal proportions make this
man-made gash in nature’s eternal hills a magnificent spectacle. Its
fullest glory will soon be dimmed, for the tropic jungle will cover its
brilliant hues with a robe of green.]
Travelers in Burmah are fond of telling how the trained elephants pile
teak lumber, pushing with tusk and pulling with trunk until the beams
lie level and parallel to an inch. But marvelous as is the delicacy with
which the unwieldy animals perform their work, it is outdone by the
miraculous ingenuity with which the inventive mind of man has adapted
these monsters of steel to their appointed task. We shall see on the
Zone many mechanical marvels, but to my mind the sight of a man, seated
placidly in a comfortable chair, and with a touch on levers making a
twenty foot steel arm, with a pair of scoops each as big as a hogshead
at the end, feel up and down a bit of land until it comes upon a boulder
weighing five tons, then pick it up, deposit it on a flat car, and block
it around with smaller stones to hold it firm--this spectacle I think
will rank with any as an illustration of mechanical genius. It is a pity
old Archimedes, who professed himself able to move the world with a
lever if he could only find a place for his fulcrum, could not sit a
while in the chair of an Isthmian steam shoveler. These men earn from
$210 to $240 a month and are the aristocracy of the mechanical force in
a society where everybody is frankly graded according to his earnings.
They say their work is exceedingly hard upon the nerves, a statement
which I can readily credit after watching them at it. Once in a great
while they deposit the six-ton load of a shovel on top of some laborer’s
head. Incidents of this sort are wearing on their nerves and also upon
the physique of the individual upon whom the burden has been laid. On
several occasions I timed steam shovels working in the Cut on various
sorts of material and found the period occupied in getting a load,
depositing it on the car and getting back into position for another bite
to be a fraction less than two minutes. According to my observations
from five to eight shovel loads filled a car. The car once filled, a big
negro wig-wagged the tidings to the engineer who pulled the train ahead
the length of one car. The Jamaica negro wig-wagging is always a
pleasing spectacle. He seems to enjoy a job as flagman which gives from
five to fifteen minutes of calm reflection to each one minute of
wagging. Far be it from me to question the industry of these sable
Britons by whom the Canal is being built. Their worth in any place,
except that of waiters at the Tivoli Hotel, must be conceded. But their
specialty is undoubtedly wig-wagging.
[Illustration: BUILDING AN UPPER TIER OF LOCKS]
[Illustration: TRAVELING CRANES THAT BEAR THE BRUNT OF BURDEN CARRYING]
[Illustration: _Photo by Brown Bros._
THE FLOOR OF A LOCK]
If we climb upon one of the empty flat cars we will see that upon the
floor of the whole train, usually made up of about 20 cars, is stretched
a stout cable attached to a heavy iron wedge like a snow plow which,
while the train is loading, is on the end car. Hinged sheets of steel
fall into place between the cars, making the train floor continuous from
end to end. If we should accompany the train to the dump--say at the
great fill at Balboa about twelve miles from the Cut--we shall find that
when it has reached its assigned position a curious looking car on which
is an engine which revolves a huge drum, or bull wheel, is attached in
place of the locomotive. The end of the steel cable buried under
hundreds of tons of rock and dirt is fastened to the bull wheel, the
latter begins to revolve and the steel plow begins to travel along the
train thrusting the load off to one side. One side of the flat cars is
built up and the plow is so constructed that the load is thrown to the
other side only. It takes from 7 to 15 minutes to unload a train by this
device which is known as the Lidgerwood Unloader.
[Illustration: EXCAVATING WITH A MONITOR AS CALIFORNIANS DIG GOLD]
Now it is apparent that after a certain number of trains have thus been
unloaded the side of the track on which the load falls, unless it be a
very deep ravine, will presently be so filled up that no more loads can
be dumped there. To smooth out this mound of dirt along the track
another type of snow plow is used, one stretching out a rigid steel arm
ten or twelve feet from the side of the locomotive which pushes it into
the mass of débris. This is called a spreader and as may well be
imagined requires prodigious power. The dump heap thus spread, and
somewhat leveled by hand labor, becomes a base for another track.
In the early days of the work this business of shifting tracks required
the services of hundreds of men. But it grew so steadily under the needs
of the service--they say the Panama Railway runs sideways as well as
lengthwise--that the mechanical genius of American engineers was called
into play to meet the situation. Wherefore behold the track-shifter, an
engine operating a long crane which picks up the track, ties, rails and
all, and swings it to one side three feet or more according to the
elasticity of the track. It takes nine men to operate a track shifter,
and it does the work which took 500 men pursuing the old method of
pulling spikes, shifting ties and rails separately and spiking the rails
down again. It is estimated that by this device the government was saved
several million dollars, to say nothing of an enormous amount of time.
While the Panama Railroad is only 47 miles long it has laid almost 450
miles of rails, and these are continually being taken up and shifted,
particularly those laid on the bed of the Canal in Culebra Cut. It is
perfectly clear that to keep the steam shovels within reaching distance
of the walls they are to dig away, the track on which they operate and
the track on which their attendant dirt trains run must be shifted
laterally every two or three days.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
A STEAM SHOVEL IN OPERATION]
Looking up from the floor of the Canal one had in those days of rushing
construction a prospect at once gigantic, brilliant and awe inspiring.
Between Gold Hill and Contractors Hill the space open to the sky is half
a mile wide and the two peaks tower toward the sky 534 feet to the one
side and 410 on the other. We see again dimly through the smoke of the
struggling locomotives and the fumes of exploding dynamite the prismatic
color of the stripped sides of the hill, though on the higher altitudes
untouched by recent work and unscarred by slides the tropical green has
already covered all traces of man’s mutilations. In time, of course,
all this coloring will disappear and the ships will steam along betwixt
two towering walls of living green.
[Illustration: BIRD’S EYE VIEW OF THE MIRAFLORES LOCKS]
One’s attention, however, when in the Cut is held mainly by its
industrial rather than by its scenic features. For the latter the view
from above, already described, is incalculably the better. But down here
in the depths your mind is gripped by the signs of human activity on
every side. Everything that a machine can do is being done by machinery,
yet there are 6000 men working in this narrow way, men white and black
and of every intermediate and indeterminate shade. Men who talk in
Spanish, French, the gibberish of the Jamaican, in Hindoo, in Chinese.
One thinks it a pity that Col. Goethals and his chief lieutenants could
not have been at the Tower of Babel, for in that event that aspiring
enterprise would never have been halted by so commonplace an obstacle as
the confusion of tongues.
To us as we plod along all seems to be conducted with terrific energy,
but without any recognizable plan. As a matter of fact all is being
directed in accordance with an iron-clad system. That train, the last
cars of which are being loaded, on the second level must be out of the
Cut and on the main line at a fixed hour or there will be a tie-up of
the empties coming back from the distant dumps. That row of holes must
be drilled by five o’clock, for the blast must be fired as soon as the
Cut is emptied of workers. The very tourists on the observation car
going through the Cut must be chary of their questions, for that track
is needed now for a train of material. If they are puzzled by something
they see, it will all be explained to them later by the guide in his
lecture illustrated by the working model at the Tivoli Hotel.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: _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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: DEEP SEA-DREDGE AT BALBOA]
As no link in a chain is of less importance than any other link, so the
Pacific Division of the Panama Canal is of equal importance with the
other two. It has not, however, equally spectacular features. Its locks
at Pedro Miguel and at Miraflores are merely replicas of the Gatun locks
with different drops, and separated into one step of two parallel locks
at the former point, and two steps, with four locks in pairs at
Miraflores. Between the two locks is an artificial lake about 54²⁄₃
feet above sea level and about a mile and a half long. The lake is
artificial, supplied partly by small rivers that flow into it and partly
by the water that comes down from the operation of the locks above. In
fact it was created largely for the purpose of taking care of this
water, though it also served to reduce somewhat the amount of dry
excavation on the Canal. One advantage which both the Gatun and
Miraflores lakes have for the sailor, that does not at first occur to
the landsman, is that being filled with fresh water, as also is the main
body of the Canal, they will cleanse the bottoms of the ships passing
through of barnacles and other marine growths. This is a notable benefit
to ships engaged in tropical trade, for in those latitudes their bottoms
become befouled in a way that seriously interferes with their steaming
capacity.
[Illustration: PROPORTIONS OF THE LOCKS
A six story building would stand in the lock-chamber. Size of conduits
indicated by small sketches of wagon and locomotive.]
The name Pedro Miguel is given to this lock because the French began
operations there on the feast day of St. Peter Michael, whose name in
Spanish is applied to the spot. An omniscient gentleman on the train
once assured me that the name came from a Spanish hermit who long lived
on the spot in the odor of sanctity--and divers other odors if the
haunts of the hermits I have visited elsewhere were any criterion.
Errors of fact, however, are common on the zone. They still laugh about
a congressman who, on Gatun dam, struck an attitude and exclaimed with
feeling--“At last then I stand in the far-famed Culebra Cut”! which spot
was a trifle more than thirty miles away.
From the lower lock at Miraflores the canal describes a practically
straight course to the Pacific Ocean at Balboa, about 4¹⁄₂ miles. The
channel is continued out to sea about four miles further. All the
conditions of the Pacific and Oriental trade give assurance that at
Balboa will grow the greatest of all purely tropical ports. To it the
commerce of the whole Pacific coast of North America, and of South
America as far south at least as Lima, will irresistibly flow. To it
will also come the trade of Japan, Northern China and the Philippines,
seeking the shortest route to Europe or to our own Atlantic coast. It is
true that much of this trade will pass by, but the ships will enter the
Canal after long voyages in need of coal and in many cases of refitting.
The government has anticipated this need by providing for a monster dry
dock, able to accommodate the 1000 foot ships yet to be built, and
establishing repair shops fit to build ships as well as to repair them.
In 1913, however, when this trip through the Canal under construction
was made, little sign of this coming greatness was apparent. The old
dock of the Pacific Mail and a terminal pier of the Panama Railroad
afforded sufficient dockage for the steamships of which eight or ten a
week cleared or arrived. The chief signs of the grandeur yet to come
were the never-ceasing dirt trains rumbling down from Culebra Cut and
discharging their loads into the sea in a great fan shaped “fill” that
will afford building sites for all the edifices of the future Balboa,
however great it may become. Looking oceanward you see the three conical
islands on which the United States is already erecting its
fortifications.
[Illustration: THE GREAT FILL AT BALBOA WHERE THE CULEBRA SPOIL IS
DUMPED]
Here then the Canal ends. Begun in the ooze of Colon it is finished in
the basaltic rock of Balboa. To carry it through its fifty miles the
greatest forces of nature have been utilized when possible; fought and
overcome when not. It has enlisted genius, devotion and sacrifice, and
has inflicted sickness, wounds and death. We can figure the work in
millions of dollars, or of cubic yards, but to estimate the cost in life
and health from the time the French began until the day the Americans
ended is a task for the future historian, not the present-day
chronicler.
CHAPTER XIII
THE CITY OF PANAMA.
For an American not too much spoiled with foreign travel the city of
Panama is a most entertaining stopping place for a week or more. In what
its charm consists it is hard to say. Foreign it is, of course, a
complete change from anything within the borders, or for that matter
close to the bounds of the United States. But it is not so thorough a
specimen of Latin-American city building as Cartagena, its neighbor. Its
architecture is admittedly commonplace, the Cathedral itself being
interesting mainly because of its antiquity--and it would be modern in
old Spain. The Latin gaiety of its people breaks out in merry riot at
carnival time, but it is equally riotous in every town of Central
America. Withal there is a something about Panama that has an abiding
novelty. Perhaps it is the tang of the tropics added to the flavor of
antiquity. Anyhow the tourist who abides in the intensely modern and
purely United States hotel, the Tivoli, has but to give a dime to a
Panama hackman to be transported into an atmosphere as foreign as though
he had suddenly been wafted to Madrid.
Latter-day tourists complain that the sanitary efforts of the Isthmian
Commission have robbed Panama of something of its picturesqueness. They
deplore the loss of the streets that were too sticky for the passage of
Venetian gondolas, but entirely too liquid for ordinary means of
locomotion. They grieve over the disappearance of the public roulette
wheels and the monotonous cry of the numbers at keno. They complain that
the population has taken to the practice of wearing an inordinate
quantity of clothes instead of being content with barely enough to pique
curiosity concerning the few charms concealed. But though the city has
been remarkably purified there is still enough of physical dirt apparent
to displease the most fastidious, and quite sufficient moral
uncleanliness if one seeks for it, as in other towns.
[Illustration: PANAMA BAY FROM ANCON HILL]
[Illustration: SANTA ANA PLAZA
The fence is now removed. During the French days this Plaza was the
scene of much gaiety and still shows French influence]
The entrance by railway to Panama is not prepossessing, but for that
matter I know of few cities in which it is. Rome and Genoa perhaps excel
in offering a fine front to the visitor. But in Panama when you emerge
from the station after a journey clear across the continent, which has
taken you about three hours, you are confronted by a sort of ragged
triangular plaza. In the distance on a hill to your right is set the
Tivoli Hotel looking cool and inviting with its broad piazzas and dress
of green and white. To your left is a new native hotel, the
International, as different from the Tivoli as imaginable, built of
rubble masonry covered with concrete stucco, with rooms twice as high as
those of the usual American building. It looks cool too, in a way, and
its most striking feature is a pleasingly commodious bar, with wide open
unscreened doors on the level of the sidewalk. The Tivoli Hotel, being
owned and managed by the United States government, has no bar. This
statement is made in no spirit of invidious comparison, but merely as a
matter of helpful information to the arriving traveler undecided which
hotel to choose.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
PANAMA FROM THE SEA WALL; CATHEDRAL TOWERS IN DISTANCE]
The plaza is filled with Panama cabs--small open victorias, drawn by
stunted wiry horses like our cow ponies and driven by Panama negroes who
either do not speak English, or, in many cases, pretend not to in order
to save themselves the trouble of explaining any of the sights to their
fares. There is none of the bustle that attends the arrival of a train
in an American city. No raucous cries of “Keb, sir? Keb”! no
ingratiating eagerness to seize upon your baggage, no ready proffer of
willingness to take you anywhere. If the Panama cabby shows any interest
at all in getting a fare out of an arriving crowd it seems to be in
evading the one who beckons him, and trying to capture someone else. One
reason perhaps for the lethargy of these sable jehus is that the
government has robbed their calling of its sporting feature by fixing
their fare at ten cents to any place in town. Opportunity to rob a fare
is almost wholly denied them, hence their dejected air as compared with
the alert piratical demeanor of the buccaneers who kidnap passengers at
the railway stations of our own enlightened land. The only way the
Panama driver can get the best of the passenger is by construing each
stop as the end of a trip, and the order to drive on as constituting a
new engagement involving an additional dime. Tourists who jovially drew
up to the curbstone to greet acquaintances met _en route_ several times
in a half-hour’s ride are said to have been mulcted of a surprising
number of dimes, but in justice to the Panama hackman--who really
doesn’t have the air of rioting in ill-gotten wealth--I must say that I
never encountered an instance of this overcharge.
Your first introduction to the beauty of Panama architecture comes from
a building that fronts you as you leave your train. Three stories high
it has the massive strength of a confectioner’s creations, and is
tastefully colored a sickly green, relieved by stripes of salmon pink,
with occasional interludes of garnet and old gold. The fact that it
houses a saloon, the proportions of which would be generous on the
Bowery or South Clark Street, does not explain this brilliant color
scheme. It is merely the expression of the local color sense, and is
quite likely to be employed to lend distinction to a convent school or a
fashionable club indiscriminately.
From the Railway Plaza--originality has not yet furnished a more
attractive name--the Avenida Centrale stretches away in a generally
southerly direction to the seawall at the city’s end. What Broadway is
to New York, the Corso to Rome, or Main Street to Podunk, this street is
to Panama. It is narrow and in time will be exceedingly crowded, for
the rails of a trolley line are laid on one side, and some time in the
leisurely Panamanian future the cars will run through the old town and
so on out to Balboa where the Americans are building the great docks at
the entrance to the Canal. Just now however it is chiefly crowded with
the light open carriages which toward eventide carry up and down the
thoroughfare olive-complexioned gentlemen who look smilingly at the
balconies on either side whence fair ones--of varying degrees of
fairness with a tendency toward the rich shade of mahogany--look down
approvingly.
[Illustration: THE BULL RING; BULL FIGHTS ARE NOW PROHIBITED]
[Illustration: THE PANAMA WATER FRONT]
Panama is an old city, as American cities run, for it was founded in
1673 when the Bishop marked with a cross the place for the Cathedral.
The Bishop still plays a notable part in the life of the town, for it is
to his palace in Cathedral Plaza that you repair Sunday mornings to hear
the lucky number in the lottery announced. This curious partnership
between the church and the great gambling game does not seem to shock or
even perplex the Panamanians, and as the State turns over to the church
a very considerable percentage of the lottery’s profits it is perhaps
only fair for the Bishop to be thus hospitable. If you jeer a
well-informed Panamanian on the relations of his church to the lottery
he counters by asking suavely about the filthy tenement houses owned by
Old Trinity in New York. As a vested right under the Colombian
government the lottery will continue until 1918, then expire under the
clause in the Panama constitution which prohibits gambling. Drawings are
held each Sunday. Ten thousand tickets are issued at a price of $2.50
each, though the custom is to buy one-fifth of a ticket at a time. The
capital prize is $7500 with lesser prizes of various sums down to one
dollar. The Americans on the Zone buy eagerly, but I could not learn of
any one who had captured a considerable prize. One official who
systematically set aside $5 a week for tickets told me that, after four
years’ playing, he was several hundred dollars ahead “beside the fun”.
[Illustration: THE LOTTERY OFFICE IN THE BISHOP’S PALACE]
Though old historically, Panama is modern architecturally. It was
repeatedly swept by fires even before the era of overfumigation by the
Canal builders. Five fires considerable enough to be called “great” are
recorded. Most of the churches have been burned at least once and the
façade of the Cathedral was overthrown by an earthquake. The San Domingo
Church, the Church and Convent of San Francisco, and the Jesuit Church
still stand in ruins. In Italy or England these ruins would be cared
for, clothed by pious, or perhaps practical, hands with a certain sort
of dignity. Not so in Panama. The San Domingo Church, much visited by
tourists because of its curious flat arch, long housed a cobbler’s bench
and a booth for curios. Now its owner is utilizing such portions of the
ruin as are still stable as part of a tenement house he is building.
When reproached for thus obliterating an historic relic he blandly
offered to leave it in its former state, provided he were paid a rental
equal to that the tenement would bring in. There being no society for
the preservation of historic places in Panama his offer went unheeded,
and the church is fast being built into the walls of a flat-house. As
for the Church of the Jesuits its floor is gone, and cows and horses are
stabled in the sanctuary of its apse.
[Illustration: SAN DOMINGO CHURCH AND THE FLAT ARCH]
The streets of Panama look older than they really are. The more
substantial buildings are of rubble masonry faced with cement which
quickly takes on an appearance of age. Avenida Centrale is lined for all
but a quarter of a mile of its length with shops, over which as a rule
the merchant’s family lives--for the Panamanians, like other Latins,
have not yet acquired the New York idea that it is vulgar to live over
your own place of business but perfectly proper to live two miles or
more away over someone else’s drug store, grocery, stationery store, or
what not. There might be an essay written on the precise sort of a
business place above which it is correct for an American to live. Of
course the nature of the entrance counts, and much propriety is saved if
it be on the side front thus genteelly concealing from guests that there
are any shops in the building at all. These considerations however are
not important in Panama, and many of the best apartments are reached
through dismal doors and up winding stairways which seldom show signs of
any squeamishness on the part of the domestics, or intrusive activity by
the sanitary officers.
[Illustration: _Photo by F. A Gause_
CHIRIQUI CATTLE AT THE ABATTOIR]
Often, however, the apartments reached by such uninviting gateways are
charming. The rooms are always big, equivalent each to about three rooms
of our typical city flat. Great French windows open to the floor, and
give upon broad verandas, from which the life of the street below may be
observed--incidentally letting in the street noises which are many and
varied. The tendency is to the minimum of furniture, and that light, so
as to admit easy shifting to the breeziest spots. To our northern eyes
the adjective “bare” would generally apply to these homes, but their
furnishings are adapted to the climate and to the habits of people
living largely out of doors. Rents are high for a town of 35,000 people.
A five-room flat in a fairly good neighborhood will rent for from $60 to
$75 gold a month, and as the construction is of the simplest and the
landlord furnishes neither heat nor janitor service, it seems a heavy
return on the capital invested.
[Illustration: THE PRESIDENT’S HOUSE; A FINE TYPE OF PANAMA RESIDENCE]
It seemed to me, as the result of questioning and observation rather
than by any personal experience, that living expenses in Panama City
must be high, and good living according to our North American ideas
impossible. What the visitor finds in the homes of the people on the
Canal Zone offers no guide to the conditions existing in the native
town. For the Zone dwellers have the commissary to buy from, and that
draws from all the markets of the world, and is particularly efficient
in buying meats, which it gets from our own Beef Trust and sells for
about half of what the market man in Chicago or New York exacts. But the
native Panamanian has no such source of supply. His meats are mainly
native animals fresh killed, and if you have a taste for sanguinary
sights you may see at early dawn every morning numbers of cattle and
hogs slaughtered in a trim and cleanly open air abattoir which the
Panamanians owe to the Canal authorities. However the climate tends to
encourage a fish and vegetable diet, and the supplies of these staples
are fairly good. The family buying is done at a central market which it
is well worth the tourists’ time to visit.
[Illustration: _Photo by Gause_
THE FISH MARKET]
Every day is market day at Panama, but the crowded little open-air mart
is seen at its best of a Saturday or Sunday in the early morning. All
night long the native boats, mostly cayucas hewn out of a single log and
often as much as 35 feet long, and with a schooner rig, have been
drifting in, propelled by the never-failing trade wind. They come from
the Bayano River country, from Chorrera, from Taboga and the Isles of
Pearls, from the Bay of San Miguel and from the land of the San Blas
Indians. Great sailors these latter, veritable vikings of the tropics,
driving their cayucas through shrieking gales when the ocean steamers
find it prudent to stay in port.
[Illustration: SAN BLAS BOATS AT THE MARKET PLACE]
Nature helps the primitive people of the jungle to bring their goods to
the waiting purchasers. The breeze is constant, seldom growing to a
gale, and the tide rising full 20 feet enables them to run their boats
at high tide close to the market causeway, and when the tide retires
land their products over the flats without the trouble of lighterage.
True the bottom is of mud and stones, but the soles of the seamen are
not tender, nor are they squeamish as to the nature of the soil on which
they tread.
[Illustration: _Photo by Gause_
THE VEGETABLE MARKET]
The market is open at dawn, and the buyers are there almost as soon as
the sellers, for early rising is the rule in the tropics. Along the
sidewalks, on the curbs, in the muddy roadway even, the diverse fruits
and food products of the country are spread forth to tempt the robust
appetites of those gathered about. Here is an Indian woman, the color of
a cocoanut, and crinkled as to skin like a piece of Chinese crepe.
Before her is spread out her stock, diverse and in some items curious.
Green peppers, tomatoes a little larger than a small plum, a cheese
made of goat’s milk and packed to about the consistency of Brie; a few
yams, peas, limes and a papaya or two are the more familiar edibles.
Something shaped like a banana and wrapped in corn husks arouses my
curiosity.
[Illustration: THE MARKET ON THE CURB]
[Illustration: WHERE THE FLIES GET BUSY]
“What is it”? “Five cents”. “No, no! I mean what is it? What’s it made
of”? “Fi centavo”!
In despair over my lack of Indo-Spanish patois, I buy it and find a
little native sugar, very moist and very dark, made up like a sausage,
or a tamale in corn husks. Other mysterious objects turn out to be
ginseng, which appeals to the resident Chinese; the mamei, a curious
pulpy fruit the size of a large peach, with a skin like chamois and a
fleshly looking pit about the size of a peach-stone; the sapodilla, a
plum colored fruit with a mushy interior, which when cut transversely
shows a star-like marking and is sometimes called the star apple. It is
eaten with a spoon and is palatable. The mamei, however, like the mango,
requires a specially trained taste.
[Illustration: CAYUCAS ON MARKET DAY]
While puzzling over the native fruits a sudden clamor attracts us to a
different part of the market. There drama is in full enactment. The
market place is at the edge of the bay and up the water steps three
exultant fishermen have dragged a tuna about five feet long, weighing
perhaps 175 pounds. It is not a particularly large fish of the species,
but its captors are highly exultant and one, with the inborn instinct of
the Latin-American to insult a captive or a fallen foe, stands on the
poor tuna’s head and strikes an attitude as one who invites admiration
and applause. Perhaps our camera tempted him, but our inclination was to
kick the brute, rather than to perpetuate his pose, for the poor fish
was still living. It had been caught in a net, so its captors informed
us. On our own Florida and California coasts the tunas give rare sport
with a rod and line.
Like most people of a low order of intelligence the lower class native
of Panama is without the slightest sense of humanity to dumb animals. He
does not seem to be intentionally cruel--indeed he is too indolent to
exert himself unless something is to be gained. But he never lets any
consideration for the sufferings of an animal affect his method of
treating it. The iguana, ugliest of lizards, which he eats with avidity,
is one of his chief victims. This animal is usually taken alive by
hunters in order that he may undergo a preliminary fattening process
before being committed to the pot. In captivity his condition is not
pleasant to contemplate. Here at the market are eight or ten, living,
palpitating, looking out on the strange world with eyes of wistful
misery. Their short legs are roughly twisted so as to cross above their
backs, and the sharp claws on one foot are thrust through the fleshy
part of the other so as to hold them together without other fastening. A
five-foot iguana is fully three feet tail, and of that caudal yard at
least two feet of its tapering length is useless for food, so the native
calmly chops it off with his machete, exposing the mutilated but living
animal for sale.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
PANAMA FROM THE BAY; ANCON HILL IN THE BACKGROUND]
To our northern eyes there is probably no animal except a serpent more
repulsive than the iguana. He is not only a lizard, but a peculiarly
hideous one--horned, spined, mottled and warty like a toad. But
loathsome as he is, the wanton, thoughtless tortures inflicted upon him
by the marketmen invest him with the pathetic dignity which martyrs
bear.
Fish is apparently the great staple of the Panama market, as beseems a
place which is practically an island and the very name of which
signifies “many fishes”. Yet at the time I was there the variety exposed
for sale was not great. The corbina, apparently about as staple and
certain a crop as our northern cod, the red snapper, mullet and a flat
fish resembling our fresh water sunfish, were all that were exhibited.
There were a few West Indian lobsters too, about as large as our average
sized lobsters, but without claws, having antennae, perhaps 18 inches
long, instead. Shrimps and small molluscs were plentifully displayed. As
to meats the market was neither varied nor pleasing. If the assiduous
attentions of flies produce any effect on raw meats prejudicial to human
health, the Panama market offers rich field for some extension of the
sanitary powers of Col. Gorgas.
[Illustration: Copyright, 1913, F. E. Wright.
AVENIDA B. PANAMA CITY
Most of the streets in Panama end at the water side as the city is built
upon a narrow promontory. The effect of the blue water and sky closing
the end of the narrow street of parti-colored houses is picturesque.]
In one notable respect this Panama market differs from most open air
affairs of the sort. The vendors make no personal effort to sell their
goods. There is no appeal to passing buyers, no crying of wares, no
“ballyhoo,” to employ the language of Coney Island. What chatter there
is is chiefly among the buyers; the sellers sit silent by their wares
and are more apt to receive a prospective customer sulkily than with
alert eagerness. Indeed the prevalent condition of the Panamanian, so
far as observable on the streets, seems to be a chronic case of sulks.
Doubtless amongst his own kind he can be a merry dog, but in the
presence of the despised “gringo” his demeanor is one of apathy, or
contemptuous indifference. Perhaps what he was doing to the tuna and the
iguana the day of our visit to the market was only what he would like to
be doing to the northern invaders of his nondescript market place.
If you view the subject fairly the Panamanian in the street is somewhat
entitled to his view of the American invasion. Why should he be
particularly pleased over the independence of Panama and the digging of
the Canal? He got none of the ten million dollars, or of the $250,000
annual payment. That went to his superiors who planned the “revolution”
and told him about it when it was all over. The influx of Americans
brought him no particular prosperity, unless he drove a hack. They lived
in Commission houses and bought all their goods in their own commissary.
It was true they cleaned up his town, but he was used to the dirt and
the fumes of fumigation made him sneeze. Doubtless there was no more
yellow fever, but he was immune to that anyway.
[Illustration: POTTERY VENDORS NEAR THE PANAMA CITY MARKET]
But way down in the bottom of his heart the real unexpressed reason for
the dislike of the mass of Panamanians for our people is their
resentment at our hardly concealed contempt for them. Toward the more
prosperous Panamanian of social station this contempt is less
manifested, and he accordingly shows less of the dislike for Americans
that is too evident among the masses of the people. But as for the
casual clerk or mechanic we Americans call him “spiggotty” with frank
contempt for his undersize, his lack of education and for his large
proportion of negro blood. And the lower class Panamanian smarting under
the contemptuous epithet retorts by calling the North Americans
“gringoes” and hating them with a deep, malevolent rancor that needs
only a fit occasion to blaze forth in riot and in massacre.
“Spiggotty”, which has not yet found its way into the
dictionaries, is derived from the salutation of hackmen seeking a
fare--“speaka-da-English”. Our fellow countrymen with a lofty and it
must be admitted a rather provincial scorn for foreign peoples--for your
average citizen of the United States thinks himself as superior to the
rest of the world as the citizen of New York holds himself above the
rest of the United States--are not careful to limit its application to
Panamanians of the hackdriving class. From his lofty pinnacle of
superiority he brands them all, from the market woman with a stock of
half a dozen bananas and a handful of mangoes to the banker or the
merchant whose children are being educated in Europe like their father
as “spiggotties”. Whereat they writhe and curse the Yankees.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
FROM A PANAMA BALCONY
In the narrow streets the broad balconies bring neighbors close
together]
“Gringo” is in the dictionaries. It is applied to pure whites of
whatever nation other than Spanish or Portuguese who happen to be
sojourning in Spanish-American lands. The Century Dictionary rather
inadequately defines it thus: “Among Spanish Americans an Englishman or
an Anglo-American; a term of contempt. Probably from Greico, a Greek”.
The dictionary derivation is not wholly satisfactory. Another one, based
wholly on tradition, is to the effect that during the war with Mexico
our soldiers were much given to singing a song, “Green Grow the Rashes,
Oh”! whence the term “Gringoes” applied by the Mexicans. The etymology
of international slang can never be an exact science, but perhaps this
will serve.
Whatever the derivation, whatever the dictionary definitions, the two
words “spiggotty” and “gringo” stand for racial antagonism, contempt and
aversion on the part of the more northern people; malice and suppressed
wrath on that of the Spanish-Americans.
You will find this feeling outcropping in every social plane in the
Republic of Panama. It is, however, noticeably less prevalent among the
more educated classes. Into the ten mile wide Canal Zone the Americans
have poured millions upon millions of money and will continue to do so
for a long time to come. Much of this money finds its way, of course,
into the hands of the Panamanians. The housing and commissary system
adopted by the Commission have deprived the merchants and landowners of
Colon of their richest pickings, but nevertheless the amount of good
American money that has fallen to their lot is a golden stream greater
than that which flowed over the old Royal Road in its most crowded days.
Few small towns will show so many automobiles as Panama and they have
all been bought since the American invasion.
[Illustration: THEIR FIRST COMMUNION
Panama is a Roman Catholic City with picturesque church processions]
Nevertheless the Americans are hated. They are hated for the commissary
system. The French took no such step to protect their workers from the
rapacity of Panama and Colon shopkeepers, and they are still talking of
the time of the French richness. They hate us because we cleaned their
towns and are keeping them clean--not perhaps because they actually
prefer the old filth and fatalities, but because their correction
implies that they were not altogether perfect before we came. For the
strongest quality of the Panamanian is his pride, and it is precisely
that sentiment which we North Americans have either wantonly or
necessarily outraged.
[Illustration: MARRIAGE IS AN AFFAIR OF SOME POMP]
Without pretension to intimate acquaintance with Panamanian home life I
may state confidently that this attitude toward the Yankees is
practically universal. The ordinary demeanor of the native when accosted
is sulky, even insolent. The shop-keeper, unless he be a Chinese, as
most of the better ones are, makes a sale as if he were indifferent to
your patronage, and throws you the finished bundle as though he were
tossing a bone to a dog. One Sunday morning, viewing the lottery drawing
at the Archbishop’s palace, I saw a well-dressed Panamanian, apparently
of the better class, roused to such wrath by a polite request that he
remove his hat to give a lady a better view, that one might have thought
the best blood of all Castile had been enraged by some deadly insult.
[Illustration: THE MANLY ART IN THE TROPICS]
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
A GROUP OF NATIONAL POLICE]
This smoldering wrath is ever ready to break out; the brutal savagery
which manifests itself in the recurrent revolutions of Spanish-America
is ever present in Panama. On the Fourth of July, 1912, the Americans
resident on the Zone held patriotic exercises at Ancon. After the
speeches and the lunch a number of the United States marines wandered
into the City of Panama and, after the unfortunate fashion of their
kind, sought out that red-lighted district of infamy which the Panama
authorities have thoughtfully segregated in a space between the public
hospital and the cemeteries. The men were unarmed, but in uniform.
Naturally their holiday began by visits to a number of Panamanian gin
mills where the liquid fuel for a fight was taken aboard. In due time
the fight came. A Panama policeman intervened and was beaten for his
pains. Other police came to his rescue. Somebody fired a shot and soon
the police, running to their station, returned with magazine rifles and
began pumping bullets into the unarmed marines. The latter for a time
responded with stones, but the odds were too great and they broke and
ran for the American territory of the Canal Zone. Meantime of course the
noise of the fusillade had alarmed the American authorities. At Ancon,
separated from Panama City only by an imaginary boundary line, the Zone
police were mustered for service in case of need, and at Camp Otis, an
hour away by rail, the 10th Infantry, U. S. A., was drawn up under arms,
and trains made ready to bring the troops to the riotous city at
command. But the order never came, though the 10th officers and men
alike were eager for it. It could come only through the American
minister, and he was silent, believing that the occasion did not warrant
the employment of the troops on the foreign soil of Panama. So the
marines--or as many of them as their officers could gather up--were sent
to their post, Camp Elliott, by train while those arrested by the
Panamanians were taken to the Chiriqui Jail, or to the Panama hospitals.
In jail the unarmed captives were beaten and tortured after the fashion
of the average Latin-American when he has a foe, helpless in his power.
The day ended with three American marines killed and many wounded; the
Americans, soldiers and civilians, both gritting their teeth and eager
to take possession of Panama; and the Panamanians, noisy, insolent,
boastful, bragging of how they had whipped the “Yankee pigs” and daring
the whole United States to attempt any punishment.
[Illustration: TABOGA, THE PLEASURE PLACE OF PANAMA]
The United States seems to have supinely “taken the dare”, as the boys
would say, for though the affray and the murders occurred in July, 1912,
nothing has yet been done. In answer to a formal query in April, 1913,
the Department of State replied that the matter was “still the subject
of diplomatic correspondence which it is hoped will have a satisfactory
termination”.
Americans on the Zone are depressed over the seeming lack of vigor on
the part of the home government. They say that the apparent immunity
enjoyed by the assailants of the marines has only enhanced the
contemptuous hatred of the natives for the Americans. “Let them step on
our side of the line”, says the swashbuckling native with a chip on his
shoulder, “and we’ll show ’em”. Among the Americans on the Zone there is
almost universal regret that the troops were not marched into Panama on
the day of the riot. Authority existed under the treaty with the
Republic of Panama. The troops were ready. The lesson need not have been
a severe one, but it was deserved and would have been lasting.
Furthermore those best equipped to judge say that the event is only
deferred, not averted. “Spiggotty” and “Gringo” will not continue long
to make faces over an imaginary line without a clash.
[Illustration: SANTA ANA CHURCH, 1764]
Despite the feeling against the Americans, all classes of Panamanians
must admit receiving a certain amount of advantage from the activities
of the Canal builders. Moreover the $10,000,000 paid over by the United
States for the Canal Zone has not been squandered, nor has it been
dissipated in graft. We are inclined to laugh because one of the first
uses to which it was put was to build a government theater, which is
opened scarce thirty days out of the year. But it is fair to take the
Latin temperament into consideration. There is no Latin-American
republic so impoverished as not to have a theater built by the public.
The Republic of Panama, created overnight, found itself without any
public buildings whatsoever, barring the jail. Obviously a national
capitol was the first need and it was speedily supplied. If one wing was
used to house a theater that was a matter for local consideration and
not one for cold-blooded Yankees to jeer about. The Republic itself was
a little theatrical, rather reminiscent of the papier-mâché creations of
the stage carpenter, and might be expected to vanish like a
transformation scene. At any rate with the money in hand the Panamanians
built a very creditable government building, including a National
Theater, and an imposing building for the National Institute as well.
They might have done worse. It showed that the revolution was more of a
business affair than most Central-American enterprises of that sort. The
average leader of so successful an enterprise would have concealed the
greater part of the booty in a Paris bank account to his own order, and
used the rest in building up an army for his own maintenance in power.
Panama has her needed public buildings--let us wink at the theater--and
$7,500,000 invested in New York against a time of need.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE PANAMA NATIONAL INSTITUTE
In the background is the Canal administration building and the residence
of Col. Gorgas]
The three government buildings in the City of Panama are all creditable
architecturally, and from a superficial standpoint structurally as well.
Whenever you are shown a piece of government work in a Latin-American
country your guide always whispers “graft”--as for that matter is the
practice in New York as well. But Panama seems to have received the
worth of its money. The Government Palace, which corresponds to our
national capitol, stands facing a little plaza open toward the sea. It
is nearly square, 180 by 150 feet, surrounding a tasteful court or patio
after the South American manner. Built of rubble masonry it is faced
with white cement, and is of a singularly simple and effective
architectural style for a Latin-American edifice. The building houses
the Assembly Hall, the Government Theater and the public offices. The
interior of the theater, which seats about 1000, is rather in the
European than the North American style with a full tier of boxes, large
foyers decorated with paintings by Panama artists, and all the
appurtenances of a well-appointed opera house.
[Illustration: THE MUNICIPAL BUILDING]
[Illustration: THE NATIONAL PALACE AND THEATER]
Next to the Government Palace the most ambitious public building in
Panama is the home of the National Institute, or University, which
nestles at the foot of Ancon Hill. This is a group of seven buildings
surrounding a central court. The Institute is designed in time to become
a true university, but its accommodations are at present far in advance
of its needs. Equipped with an excellent faculty it will for some time
to come--it was opened only in 1911--suffer from a lack of pupils,
because the public schools in the Republic are not yet fitted to equip
pupils for a university course. The population of Panama is largely
illiterate. The census in 1911 showed 60,491 children of school age, and
only 18,607 enrolled in schools of all classes. Of those more than
16,000 were enrolled in the primary schools. The Government however is
doing all it can to encourage education among the masses, and the
National Institute will offer to all who fit themselves to enter its
classes not only free tuition, but free board and lodging as well.
The third considerable public building in Panama is the Municipal
Building which stands at one corner of the Cathedral Plaza. It contains,
beside the council chamber and usual offices, the Columbus Library of
about 2500 books, including many rare volumes on the ancient history of
the Isthmian land and its people.
To return however to the physical aspects of the City of Panama. It is
recorded of a certain King of Spain that when certain bills for the
fortification of Panama City were presented to him he gazed into
vacancy with the rapt eyes of one seeing visions.
“Methinks I behold those walls from here”, quoth he to the suppliant
treasurer, “they must be so prodigious”!
[Illustration: _Photo by Gause_
SALIENT ANGLE OF LANDWARD WALL]
Indeed what remains of the walls of Panama is impressive to American
eyes that, accustomed to the peace and newness of our own towns, always
rejoice in seeing the relics of the time when every city was a walled
camp. Ruins and the remnants of by-gone days of battle are now and will
become increasingly objects of human interest. For in the centuries to
come our present edifices of iron sheathed with slabs of stone or brick
will disintegrate into rust and clay, while as for the scenes of our
most glorious battles they remain even today as barely discernible lines
of earthworks. Gone is the day of turreted castles, frowning walls,
bastions, ravelins and donjon keeps.
It is little wonder that even the remnants of Panama’s wall are
impressive. The new city was decreed by the Queen of Spain in 1672, or
about a year after Morgan had despoiled and destroyed Old Panama. The
site was chosen largely because of the opportunity it afforded for
defense, and the good Bishop had scarcely selected the site for the
Cathedral when the military officials began staking out the line of the
walls. Though almost 250 years have since passed a great part of these
fortifications is still intact, and the plan of the whole is still
easily traceable amid the narrow streets of the crowded little city.
Most notable of the sections still standing is the sea wall, sometimes
called Las Bovedas, from which on the one hand one looks down on the
inmates of the flowery little Chiriqui Prison, and on the other out to
sea--past the shallow harbor with its army of pelicans, past the tossing
little native fishing and market boats, past the long Balboa fill where
the Canal builders have thrown a mountain into the sea and made a vast
plain, and so on to the three little islands, rising craggy from the
ocean where the Great Republic of the North is mounting the cannon that
shall guard the entrance of the Canal from any invader. Very different
from the old Spanish fort of the 17th century are these military works
of the 20th and not nearly so picturesque. Such as they are must be left
to the imagination, for the military authorities rigidly bar the camera
from the post.
[Illustration: _Photo by Gause_
BOYS SKATING ON SEA WALL]
The original city stood on a peninsula, and three sides of this were
bounded by the sea wall, rising from about high water mark to a height
of from twenty to thirty feet. About half way between the present plazas
of the Cathedral and Santa Ana the wall turned inward with a great
frowning bastion at each corner and crossed the Isthmus. A moat was dug
on its landward side, shutting off all communication with the mainland
save over the drawbridge and through the sally-port on the line of the
Avenida Centrale. With drawbridge up and sally-port closed the old town
was effectually shut off from attack by land, while its guns on the
landward wall effectually commanded the broad plain on which now stands
the upper part of the town, and the declivities of Ancon Hill where now
are the buildings of the Zone hospital and the Tivoli Hotel.
[Illustration: VAULTS IN THE PANAMA CEMETERY
The small sepulchres are rented for a specified time, usually three
years. Unless the lease is then renewed the bones of the tenant are cast
out into a common pile.]
A good bit of construction and of military engineering was the wall of
Panama--our own engineers on the Canal have done no better. Round the
corner from La Mercedes Church a salient bastion crops out among fragile
frame tenements and jerry-built structures. The angle is as sharp as
though the storms of two and a half centuries had not broken over it.
Climb it and you will find the top level, grassy, and broad enough for a
tennis court full thirty feet above the level of the town. The
construction was not unlike that of the center walls of the locks
designed by the best American engineers. Two parallel walls of masonry
were built, about forty to fifty feet apart and the space between filled
in with dirt, packed solidly. On this part of the wall were no bomb
proofs, chambers or dungeons. The guns were mounted _en barbette_, on
the very top of the wall and discharged through embrasures in the
parapet. Rather let it be said that they were to have been fired, for
the new Panama was built after the plague of the pirates had passed and
the bane of the buccaneers was abated. No foe ever assaulted the city
from its landward side. In the frequent revolutions the contending
parties were already within the town and did their fighting in its
streets, the old walls serving no more useful purpose than the ropes
which define a prize ring. Only the sea-wall has heard the thunder of
cannon in deadly conflict. There during the brief revolution which gave
the United States the whip hand in Panama a Colombian gunboat did indeed
make a pretense of shelling the city, but was driven away by machine
guns mounted on the wall.
[Illustration: RUINS OF SAN DOMINGO CHURCH]
Within the walls, or the portion of the town the walls once surrounded,
live the older families of native Panamanians, or those of foreign birth
who have lived so long upon the Isthmus as to become identified with its
life. The edifices along the streets are more substantial, the shops
more dignified than in the newer quarter without. There are few, if any,
frame structures and these evidently patched in where some fire has
swept away more substantial predecessors. This part of Panama is
reminiscent of many small towns of Spain or Portugal. The galleries nod
at each other across streets too narrow to admit the burning sun, or to
permit the passage of more than one vehicle at a time. The older
churches, or their ruins, diversify the city streets, and the Cathedral
Plaza in the very center with the great open café of the historic Hotel
Centrale at one side has a distinctly foreign flavor. Here as one sits
in the open listening to the native band and sipping a drink--softer, if
one be wise, than that the natives thrive upon--and watches the native
girls of every shade and in gayest dress driving or loitering past, one
feels far from the bustling North American world, far from that snap and
ginger and hustle on which Americans pride themselves. And then perhaps
the music is suddenly punctuated by heavy dull “booms”, like a distant
cannonade, and one knows that only a few miles away dynamite is rending
rock and man is grappling fiercely with nature.
Carnival occupies the four days preceding Ash Wednesday, the period
known in all Catholic countries as the Mardi Gras. For years its gaiety
has been preceded by a vigorous political contest for the high honor of
being Queen of the Carnival, though it is said that in later years this
rivalry has been less determined than of yore. At one time, however, it
was contended for as strenuously as though the presidency of the
republic was at stake and the two political parties--liberal and
conservative--made it as much a stake of political activity as though
the destiny of the State was involved. Happy the young woman who had a
father able and willing to foot the bills, for no corrupt practices act
intervened to save candidates from the wiles of the campaign grafter, or
to guard the integrity of the voter from the insidious temptations of
the man with a barrel.
It would be chivalric to say that the one issue in the campaign is the
beauty of the respective candidates, but alas for a mercenary age! The
sordid spirit of commercialism has crept in and the Panamanian papa must
look upon the ambitions of his beauteous daughter as almost as expensive
as a six cylinder automobile, a trip to Europe, or a yearning for a
titled husband. But sometimes there are compensations. It is whispered
that for one in retail trade in a large way it is no bad advertisement
to have a Carnival Queen for a daughter.
[Illustration: SOME CARNIVAL FLOATS
In the car shown in the upper right-hand corner is the Queen of the
Carnival of 1913]
We have tried carnivals in various of our more cold-blooded American
cities, but we cannot get the spirit. Our floats are more artistic and
expensive, our decorations are more lavish, but we sit and view the
parade with detached calmness as though the revelers were hired clowns.
In Panama everybody joins in the sport. The line of carriages around the
park in the Plaza Centrale, thence by the Avenida to the Plaza Santa Ana
and back is unbroken. The confetti falls like a January snow and the
streets are ankle deep. Everyone is in mask and you can never tell
whether the languishing eyes peering out upon you are set in a face of
pearl or of ebony. The noise of innumerable horns and rattles rises to
Heaven and reverberates in the narrow streets, while the bells jangle
out of tune, as is their custom. Oh, those bells of Panama! Never were
so many peals and chimes out of harmony. Stedman, who heard them only in
an ordinary moment, not in their Mardi Gras madness, put them to verse
thus:
“Loudly the cracked bells overhead
Of San Francisco ding
With Santa Ana, La Merced,
Felipe answering.
Banged all at once, and four times four
Morn, noon and night the more and more,
Clatter and clang with huge uproar,
The bells of Panama”.
[Illustration: THE ANCIENT CATHEDRAL
Its towers have looked down on carnival, revolution, revelry and riot]
Señoritas of sundry shades look down sweetly from the balconies, and
shower confetti on gallant caballeros who stalk along as giant
chanticleers, or strive to entangle in parti-colored tapes the lances of
a gay party of toreadors. At night some of the women enmesh giant
fireflies in their raven locks with flashing effect. King License rules
supreme, and some of the horseplay even in the brightly lighted cafés of
the Centrale and Metropolitan rather transcends the limits of coldly
descriptive prose. The natives will tell you that the Cathedral Plaza is
the center of propriety; the Plaza Santa Ana a trifle risqué. After
observation and a return at daybreak from the carnival balls held at the
Centrale and Metropolitan Hotels you can meditate at your leisure upon
the precise significance of the word propriety in Panama at Mardi Gras.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE POLICE STATION, PANAMA]
The clause in the treaty which grants to the United States authority to
maintain order in the Republic might very readily be stretched to
include police power over Panama. This has not been done however and the
city has its own police force, an exceedingly numerous one for a town of
its size. Undoubtedly, however, diplomatic representations from the
United States have caused the Panamanians to put their police
regulations somewhat in accord with North American ideas. There are no
more bull fights--“We never had very good bull-fights anyway”, said a
Panama gentleman plaintively acquiescing in this reform. Cock-fights
however flourish and form, with the lottery drawing, the chief Sunday
diversion. A pretty dismal spectacle it is, too, with two attenuated
birds, often covered with blood and half sightless, striking fiercely at
each other with long steel spurs, while a crowd of a hundred or so,
blacks and whites, indiscriminately yell encouragement and shriek for
bets from the surrounding arena. The betting in fact is the real support
of the game. The Jamaicans particularly have their favorite cocks and
will wager a week’s pay on their favorites and all of their wives’
laundry earnings they can lay hands upon as well. One or two gamecocks
tethered by the leg are as common a sight about a Jamaican’s hut as
“houn’ dawgs” around a Missouri cabin.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF OUR LADY OF MERCY (LA MERCED)]
If there is any regulation of the liquor traffic in Panama, it is not
apparent to the casual observer. Nowhere does one see so much drinking,
and nowhere that people drink at all is there less drunkenness. It is a
curious fact that these two phenomena--wide-open drinking places and
little drunkenness--are often found together. In Panama the saloons are
legion, and I regret to say the biggest of them are run by Americans. No
screens obstruct a full view of the interiors, and hardened tipplers
flaunt their vice in the faces of all beholders. Perhaps the very
publicity impels them to quit before they are hopelessly befuddled.
Possibly the moist and somewhat debilitating climate permits the
innocuous use of stimulants to a greater extent than would be possible
in the North. Beside the absence of any scandalous open drunkenness
there seems to be some significance in the fact that the records of the
Zone hospitals show a surprisingly small number of deaths from diseases
induced by chronic alcoholism. But the casual observer strolling on
Avenida Centrale, or along the streets tributary to it, might be excused
for thinking Panama one great grog shop. It is curious, too, that
despite the Latin character of the populace the taste for light wines,
in which some see the hope of national temperance, does not seem
general. Whisky, brandy and rum are the regular tipples. On a still
remembered night in Panama, before the American invasion, the Centrale
Hotel bar was made free to all. No drinks were served to the thirsty,
but to all who appeared a bottle was given and the line marched past for
some hours. Yet, even at that, there was no considerable drunkenness
observed. Apparently for the Panamanians drink is not a hopeless evil,
but to the soldiers and marines of the United States stationed on the
Isthmus and denied the rational social life of a well-regulated canteen
the open doors of the saloons of Panama are as the open doors to a
hotter spot. Their more strenuous temperaments will not stand the
stimulant which leaves a Panamanian as stolid as before. The fatal riot
of July 4, 1912, is one illustration of what Panama saloon hospitality
may do with the men who wear the khaki.
[Illustration: YOUNG AMERICA ON PANAMA BEACH]
[Illustration: READY TO CONTROL THE PACIFIC]
Shopping in Panama is a decidedly cosmopolitan enterprise. The
shopkeeper of whom I bought a Panama hat, made in Ecuador, did business
under a Spanish name, was in fact a Genoese and when he found I could
speak neither Spanish nor Italian coaxed me up to his price in French.
Most of the retail prices are of so elastic a sort that when you have
beaten them down two-thirds you retire with your package perfectly
confident that they would have stood another cut. Nevertheless the
Chinese merchants, who are the chief retail dealers in the tropics,
compel respect. They live cleanly, are capable business men, show none
of the sloth and indifference of the natives, and seem to prosper
everywhere. The Chinese market gardens in the outskirts of Panama are a
positive relief for the neatness of their trim rows of timely plants.
The Panamanian eats yams and grumbles that the soil will grow nothing
else; the Chinaman makes it produce practically all the vegetables that
grow in our northern gardens.
Avenida Centrale ends its arterial course at the sea wall of the city,
or at least at that part of the sea wall which is the best preserved and
retains most of its old-time dignity. It is here something like the
Battery at Charleston, S. C., though the houses fringing it are not of a
like stateliness, and the aristocracy of the quarter is somewhat
tempered by the fact that here, too, is the city prison. Into the
courtyards of this calaboose you can gaze from sundry little sentry
boxes, the little sentries in which seem ever ready to step out to let
the tourist step in and afterward pose for his camera, with rifle, fixed
bayonet and an even more fixed expression. The greater part of one of
the prison yards is given over to flower beds, and though sunken some
twenty feet or more below the crest of the wall, is thoughtfully
provided with such half-way stations in the way of lean-to sheds,
ladders and water butts that there seems to be no reason why any
prisoner should stay in who wants to get out. But perhaps they don’t
often yearn for liberty. A wire fence cuts off the woman’s section of
the jail and the several native women I observed flirting assiduously
with desperate male malefactors from whom they were separated only by
this fence, seemed content with their lot, and evidently helped to
cultivate like resignation in the breasts of their dark adorers. A
white-clad guard, machete at side and heavy pistol at belt, walks among
them jingling a heavy bunch of keys authoritatively but offering no
interruption to their tender interludes.
On the other side of the row of frame quarters by which the prison yard
is bisected you can see at the normal hours the prisoners taking their
meals at a long table in the open air. Over the parapet of the sea wall
above, an equally long row of tourists is generally leveling cameras,
and sometimes exchanging lively badinage with some criminal who objects
to figuring in this amateur rogues’ gallery. To the casual spectator it
all savors of opera bouffe, but there are stories a-plenty that the
Panama jail has had its share of brutal cruelty as have most places
wherein men are locked away from sight and subject to the whims of
others not so very much their superiors. Once the Chiriqui Prison was a
fortress, the bank of quarters for the prisoners formed the barracks,
and the deep archways under the sea wall were dungeons oft populated by
political prisoners. Miasma, damp and the brutality of jailers have many
a time brought to occupants of those dungeons their final discharge, and
a patch of wall near by, with the bricks significantly chipped, is
pointed out as the place where others have been from time to time stood
up in front of a firing squad at too short a range for misses. The
Latin-American lust for blood has had its manifestations in Panama, and
the old prison has doubtless housed its share of martyrs.
[Illustration: THE FLOWERY CHIRIQUI PRISON
Where native women prisoners may flirt without interruption with male
malefactors, separated only by a wire fence]
But one thinks little of the grimmer history of the Chiriqui Prison,
looking down upon the bright flower beds, and the gay quadroon girls
flirting with some desperate character who is perhaps “in” for a too
liberal indulgence in rum last pay day. Indeed the guard wards off more
sanguinary reminiscences by telling you that they used to hold bull
baitings--a milder form of bull-fight--in the yard that the captives in
the dungeons might witness the sport, and perhaps envy the bull, _quien
sabe_?
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE MARKET FOR SHELL FISH
The black spots on the roof are vultures, the official scavengers]
The present town of Panama does not impress one with the air of being
the scene of dark crimes of covetousness, lust and hate. Its police
system, viewed superficially, is effective and most of the malefactors
in the Chiriqui Jail are there for trivial offenses only. One crime of a
few years ago however bids fair to become historic. One of the banks in
the town was well known to be the repository of the funds needed for the
payroll of the Canal force. It was the policy of the Commission to pay
off as much as possible in gold and silver, and to a very great extent
in coins of comparatively small denomination in order to keep it on the
Zone. The money paid out on pay drafts comes swiftly back through the
Commissary to the banks which accordingly accumulate a very considerable
stock of ready cash as a subsequent pay day approaches. Now the banks of
Panama do not seem to even the casual observer as strongholds, and
probably to the professional cracksman they are positive invitations to
enterprise. Accordingly, three men, only one of whom had any criminal
record or was in any sense an habitué of the underworld, set about
breaking into one of the principal banks. They laid their plans with
deliberation and conducted their operations with due regard for their
personal comfort. Their plan was to tunnel into the bank from an
adjoining building, in which they set up a bogus contracting business to
account for the odds and ends of machinery and implements they had
about. The tunnel being dark they strung electric lights in it. Being
hot, under that tropic air, they installed electric fans. All the
comforts of a burglar’s home were there.
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AND PLAZA]
From a strictly professional standpoint they made not a single blunder.
Their one error--almost a fatal one--was in not being good churchmen.
For they had planned to enter the bank late on a Saturday night. Tuesday
was to be pay day and on Monday the full amount of the pay roll would be
drawn out. But Saturday night it would all be there--several hundred
thousand dollars--and they would have all day Sunday to pack it securely
and make their getaway. Midnight, then, saw them creeping into the
bank. The safe yielded readily to their assaults, but it disgorged only
a beggarly $30,000 or so. What could be the trouble? Just then the
knowledge dawned on the disappointed bandits that Monday was a Saint’s
day, the bank would be closed, therefore the prudent Zone paymaster had
drawn his funds on Saturday. The joke was on the cracksmen.
With the comparatively few thousands they had accumulated the
disappointed outlaws took a motor boat and made for Colombia. Had they
secured the loot they expected they would have been made welcome there,
for Colombia does not recognize her run-away child Panama, and no
extradition treaty could have been appealed to by the Panamanians
against their despoilers. As it was they quarreled over the booty. One
of the three was killed; the other two were arrested for the murder, but
soon went free. Their complete immunity from prosecution calls attention
to the fact that a few hours’ trip in a motor boat will take any one
guilty of crime in Panama to a land where he will be wholly free from
punishment.
Churches in Panama, or the ruins of them, are many, and while not
beautiful are interesting. Everybody goes to see the famous flat arch of
the San Domingo Church, and its disappearance will be a sore blow to
guides and post-card dealers. Aside from its curious architectural
quality the arch derives interest from a legend of its construction by a
pious monk. Twice it fell before the mortar had time to set. The third
time its designer brought a stool and sat himself down below the heavy
keystone. “If it falls”, he said, “I go with it”. But that time the arch
stood firm, and it has withstood the assaults of centuries to come at
last to the ignoble end of incorporation in a tenement house. The arch,
which certainly looks unstable, is often pointed to as an evidence of
the slight peril on the Isthmus from earthquake shocks. Such convulsions
of nature are indeed not unknown but are usually feeble. That great
shock that overthrew San Francisco was not even registered by the
seismograph on the Canal zone.
[Illustration: IN A PANAMA PARK]
Practically all the churches are of the same plan--two towers at the
front corners with the façade built between. The towers of the Cathedral
rise high above the roof and the tapering steeples are covered with
slabs of mother-of-pearl, which make a brave spectacle from the bay when
the rosy rays of the setting sun play upon them. Within all the churches
are poor and barren of ornament. They have been stripped of their funds
by various authorities beginning with Spain itself, one of the Spanish
generals in the revolutionary days having seized all the available funds
to pay for transportation for his army. Perhaps the church resented
this, for in later days it voluntarily contributed largely out of its
remaining treasure to the revolutionary cause. Later still its gold and
silver ornaments and altar pieces were confiscated by some faction
temporarily in power. Indeed the church has been the football of
politics, always entangled with the State and thus far suffering in
prestige and pocket by the association.
[Illustration: SALVATION ARMY IN PANAMA]
The Cathedral owes its completion to a negro bishop, the son of a
charcoal burner who had determined that his boy should rise to higher
station. By hard study the lad secured admittance to the priesthood and
ultimately rose to be Bishop of Panama, the first native to fill that
post. Out of his own salary he paid much of the cost of building the
great church, the corner-stone of which had been laid when the city was
founded, and by his zeal in soliciting funds secured its completion.
A systematic tour of the churches of Panama is well worth the visitor’s
time. More that is curious will be found than there is of the beautiful,
and to the former class I am inclined to consign a much begrimed
painting in the Cathedral which tradition declares to be a Murillo.
Perhaps more interesting than the Cathedral is the Church of San
Francisco, in the Plaza Bolivar. The present structure dates back only
to 1785, two former edifices on the same site having been burned. The
ruins of the beautiful cloister of the Franciscan convent adjoin it, but
are concealed from view by an unsightly board fence which the tourist,
not having a guide, will not think of passing through. The ruins,
however, are well worth seeing.
[Illustration: COSTUME DE RIGUEUR FOR FEBRUARY]
Clubs share with churches in the social life of Panama. Perhaps indeed
they rather outshine the latter. At any rate such buildings as the Union
Club and the University Club, both of which abut upon the bay would be a
credit to a city twice the size. The former club, as its name implies,
was intended to be a meeting place where liberals and conservatives
could lay aside political differences in social unity. However, politics
in Panama, as in all places where there are not real vital issues
dividing the parties, breeds bitter personal feeling and the Union Club
is said to be far from being the home of political unity. It has,
however, an excellent building, with a spacious ball-room, a swimming
tank and a magnificent view of Panama Bay with its picturesque islands.
The University Club is more an American club than a Panamanian, and it
no longer observes the restriction as to membership which its name would
imply. It too has a spacious ball-room and is a social center for the
Zone dwellers who form the major part of its membership.
The Cathedral Plaza is socially the center of town, though
geographically the old French Plaza of Santa Ana is more near the
center. Directly opposite the Cathedral is the Hotel Centrale, built
after the Spanish fashion, with four stories around a central court. In
the blither days of the French régime this court was the scene of a
revelry to which the daily death roll formed a grim contrast. However
the occasional gaiety of the Centrale Patio did not end with the French.
Even in the prosaic Yankee days of the last carnival the intervention of
the police was necessary to prevent a gentleman from being wholly
denuded, and displayed to the revelers in nature’s garb as a specimen of
the superior products of Panama.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
BUST OF LIEUT. NAPOLEON B. WYSE
This bust stands on the sea wall. The picture shows it guarded by a
United States soldier and a Panama policeman]
On a nearby corner of the Plaza is the old French administration
building, afterward occupied by the Isthmian Canal Commission. In 1905
it was a central point of infection for the yellow-fever epidemic, and
though repeatedly fumigated was finally abandoned by the American
engineers who moved their headquarters out to Culebra.
Life in Panama City is mainly outdoor life, in the dry season at any
rate, and even in the wet season the Panamanians move about in the open
like a lot of damp and discontented flies. The almost continuous line of
balconies shields the sidewalks from the rain, and nobody in Panama is
too busy to stop a half hour or so at street crossings for the downpour
to lessen. Sunday nights the band of the Republic plays in the Plaza,
and there all the people of the town congregate to listen to the music,
promenade and chat. It is the scene of that curious Latin-American
courtship which consists of following the adored one with appealing
eyes, but never by any possibility speaking to her. The procession of
girls and women is worth watching, whether the eyes be adoring or not,
and the costumes have a sort of strangeness befitting the scene. The
practice has grown up of leaving the outer walk for the negro and
negroid people, the inner paths being kept for the whites--but as the
walks merge into each other so too do the colors. If one wearies of the
moving crowds without, a step will bring him into the patio of the Hotel
Centrale where an excellent orchestra plays, and a gathering chiefly
native sips tropical drinks and disposes of the political issues of the
day with much oratory and gesticulation.
[Illustration: ON PANAMA’S BATHING BEACH]
As you make your way back to the hotel at night--if it is after eleven,
the driver will lawfully charge you twenty cents--you will vainly try to
recall any North American town of 40,000 people which can present so
many objects of interests to the visitor, and a spectacle of social life
so varied, so cosmopolitan and so pleasing.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
QUARANTINE STATION AT PACIFIC ENTRANCE TO CANAL]
The night life of the streets is as a rule placid, however, rather than
boisterous, nor is Panama an “all night town”. The rule of the tropics
is “early to rise” in any event and as a result those parts of the city
which the visitor sees usually quiet down by midnight and presently
thereafter the regions about the Cathedral Plaza are as quiet and
somnolent as Wall Street after dark. But in a more sequestered section
of the town, where the public hospital looks down significantly on the
spectacle from one side, and the cemeteries show sinister on the other,
revelry goes on apace until the cool dawn arises. There the clatter of
pianolas which have felt the climate sorely mingles with the clink of
glasses in cantinas that never close, and the laughter of lips to which,
in public at least, laughter is a professional necessity. Under the red
lights at midnight Panama shows its worst. Men of varied voyages,
familiar with the slums of Singapore and the purlieus of Paris declare
that this little city of a hybrid civilization outdoes them in all that
makes up the fevered life of the underworld. Scarcely a minute’s walk
away is the American town, quiet and restful under the tropic moon, its
winding streets well guarded by the Zone police, its houses wrapped in
vines and fragrant with flowers all dark in the hours of repose. But in
the congested tangle of concrete houses between the hospitals and the
cemetery madness and mirth reign, brains reel with the fumes of the
strange drinks of the tropics, and life is worth a passing
pleasure--nothing more. Men of many lands have cursed the Chagres fever
and the jungle’s ills, but the pest place of Panama has been subjected
to no purging process with all the efforts of the United States to
banish evil from the Isthmus.
CHAPTER XIV
THE SANITATION OF THE ZONE
The seal of the Canal Zone shows a galleon under full sail passing
between the towering banks of the Culebra Cut, with the motto, “The land
divided; the world united”. Sometimes as I trudged about the streets of
Colon or Panama, or over the hills and through the jungle in the Zone, I
have thought a more significant coat-of-arms might be made up of a
garbage can rampant and a gigantic mosquito mordant for verily by the
collection and careful covering of filth and the slaughter of the
pestilential mosquito all the work done on the Zone has been made
possible. As for the motto how would this do--“A clean country and a
salubrious strait”?
It is the universal opinion of those familiar with the Canal work that
if we had approached the task with the lack of sanitary knowledge from
which the French suffered we should have failed as they did. No evil
known to man inspires such dread as yellow fever. Leprosy, in the
individual, does indeed, although well-informed people know that it is
not readily communicated and never becomes epidemic. Cholera did strike
the heart of man with cold dread, but more than one generation has
passed since cholera was an evil to be reckoned with in civilized
countries. Yellow fever is now to be classed with it as an epidemic
disease, the spread of which can be absolutely and unerringly
controlled.
The demonstrated fact that yellow fever is transmitted only by the bite
of a _stegomyia_ mosquito which has already bitten, and been infected
by, a human being sick of the fever has become one of the commonplaces
of sanitary science. Yet that knowledge dates back comparatively few
years, and was not available to mankind at the time the French began
their struggle with tropical nature. Over the honor of first discovering
the fact of the malignant part played by the mosquito there has been
some conflict, but credit is generally given to Dr. Donald Ross, a
Scotchman in the Indian Civil Service. His investigations however were
greatly extended and practical effect was given them by surgeons in the
United States Army engaged in the work of eliminating pestilence from
Havana. To Majors Walter Reed, Jesse W. Lazear and James Carroll the
chief credit is due for testing, proving and applying the theory in
Havana. Lazear bravely gave up his life to the experiment, baring his
arm to the bite of a mosquito, and dying afterward of yellow fever in
terrible agony.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
COL. W. C. GORGAS
The man who changed the Isthmus from a pest-hole to a spot as fit for
human habitation as any place on the globe]
[Illustration: WHAT COL. GORGAS HAD TO CORRECT]
The fact of this earlier application of the mosquito theory does not in
the slightest degree detract from the great honor due to Col. W. C.
Gorgas for his work in changing the Isthmus of Panama from a pest-hole
into a spot as fit for human habitation as any spot on the globe.
Unfortunately, as the impending success of the Canal enterprise became
apparent, rivalry for the prime honor grew up between the followers of
the two chief figures, Col. Goethals and Col. Gorgas. That either of
these gentlemen shared in this feeling is not asserted, but their
friends divided the Isthmus into two hostile camps. Rivalry of this sort
was unfortunate and needless. In the words of Admiral Schley after the
battle of Santiago: “There was glory enough for all”. But the result was
to decry and to depreciate the work of Col. Gorgas in making the Isthmus
habitable. As a matter of fact no historian will for one moment hesitate
to state that only by that work was it made possible to dig the Canal at
all. Col. Goethals himself in his moments of deepest doubt as to the
size of the appropriations for sanitation purposes would hardly question
that statement. That some other man than Gorgas might have done the work
with the experience of the French and the discovery of the malignant
quality of the mosquito to guide him is undoubtedly true. That some
other man than Goethals might have dug the Canal with the experience of
two earlier engineers, as well as of the French to serve as warnings, is
equally true. But these two finished the work and to each belongs the
glory for his part.
[Illustration: ADMINISTRATION BUILDING, HOUSING THE SANITARY
DEPARTMENT]
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
DREDGING A COLON STREET
So near tide level is the surface of Colon that the dredges made canals
in the public streets]
Col. Gorgas first visited the Isthmus in 1904. In a little pamphlet
which I have before me he then described simply the essence of the
problem he had to meet. He found camped on a hill, perfectly drained and
supplied with good water, 450 marines--who of course were men of
exceptionally good physique, robust and vigorous. Yet in four months 170
out of the 450 were infected with malaria, and Col. Gorgas said, “if
these men were our laborers, working daily in Culebra Cut, exposed to
the sun and weather, many of these cases would be severe in type and at
the end of the year we would be approaching the mortality of the
French”. The cause for the infection was apparent. Though the marines’
camp was clean and sanitary there was at the foot of the hill, on which
it was perched, a village of 400 or 500 Jamaica negroes. Examination of
the people showed that all suffered from chronic malaria. The marine
strolling in the village would be bitten by a mosquito--the _anopheles_
which is partial to malaria--which had already bitten an infected negro.
The result was the spread of the infection among the marines. As Col.
Gorgas put it, “The condition is very much the same as if these four or
five hundred natives had the smallpox and our marines had never been
vaccinated”. To correct this condition he proposed, “to take this
village, put it under a systematic scheme of inspection, whereby we will
be able to control all water barrels and deposits of water, so that no
mosquitoes will be allowed to breed, look after its street cleaning and
disposal of night soil, etc., so as to get it in good sanitary
condition, then have the population examined and recorded, so that we
will have on a card a short history of each individual and keep track of
them in this way. Those suffering from malaria will be put under
treatment, and watched as long as the malarial parasite is found in the
blood. I hope, in this way, to decrease to the smallest limit the
number of _anopheles_, the malarial-bearing mosquito, and, at the same
time, to gradually eliminate the human being as a source of infection,
so that at the end of a year it will be entirely safe for an
unacclimated man to live in this village”.
[Illustration: THE WAR ON MOSQUITOES. I.
The men are oiling the surface of the streams to kill the larvae]
[Illustration: THE WAR ON MOSQUITOES. II.
Burning the grass that affords cover]
Being appointed Chief Sanitary Officer Col. Gorgas put this plan into
effect not only in that village but in every part of the Canal Zone,
particular attention being given to the cities of Panama and Colon. In
these cities the visitor will be impressed with the comparative
cleanliness of the streets and sidewalks and the covering of all garbage
receptacles. No other Central American city shows so cleanly a front.
Screening, however, is little in evidence. How great the mortality had
been under the French it is impossible to tell. Their statistics related
almost wholly to deaths in their hospitals and very largely to white
patients. Men who died out on the line, natives who worked a day or two
and went back to their villages to die were left unrecorded. In the
hospitals it was recorded that between 1881 and 1889, 5618 employees
died. The contractors were charged a dollar a day for every man sent to
the hospitals, so it may be conjectured that not all were sent who
should have been. Col. Gorgas estimates the average death rate at about
240 per 1000 annually. The American general death rate began with a
maximum of 49.94 per 1000 sinking to 21.18, at or about which point it
has remained for several years. Among employees alone our death rate was
7.50 per 1000. The French with an average force of 10,200 men employed,
lost in nine years 22,189 men. We with an average force of 33,000 lost
less than 4000 in about an equal period.
[Illustration: THE WAR ON MOSQUITOES. III.
Spraying the brooks with larvacide]
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE WAR ON MOSQUITOES. IV.
Cutting down brush which will later be burned thus destroying mosquito
covert]
When Col. Gorgas came to the Isthmus the two towns Panama and Colon were
well fitted to be breeding places for pestilence. Neither had sewers nor
any drainage system. The streets of Panama were paved after a fashion
with cobblestones and lined with gutters through which the liquid refuse
of the town trickled slowly or stood still to fester and grow putrescent
under the glowing rays of the tropic sun. Colon had no pavement
whatsoever. Neither town had waterworks and the people gathered and
stored rainwater in cisterns and pottery jars which afforded fine
breeding places for the mosquito. As a matter of fact, the whole
Isthmus, not the towns alone, furnishes plenty of homes for the
mosquito. With a rainy season lasting throughout eight months in the
year much of the soil is waterlogged. The stagnant back waters of small
streams; pools left by the rains; the footprints of cows and other
animals filled up with rain water quickly breed the wrigglers that
ultimately become mosquitoes. Mr. A. H. Jennings, the entomologist of
the Commission, has identified 125 varieties of the mosquito, of which,
however, the _anopheles_ and the _stegomyia_ are the ones peculiarly
obnoxious to man. The others are merely the common or summer resort
variety of mosquito with a fondness for ankles and the back of one’s
hand, which can be observed any time on Long Island or in New Jersey
without the expense of a trip to Panama. A careful study of literary
authorities indicates to me that at this point in the description of the
mosquito plague on the Isthmus it is proper to indulge in humorous
reflections upon the fact that the bite of the female only is dangerous.
But, given the fact, the humorous applications seem so obvious that the
reader may be trusted to draw them for himself--it would be idle to say
“herself”, for the women will not see anything humorous about it at all.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT
PANAMA BAY FROM ANCON HOSPITAL
There are few more beautiful spots in the world than the grounds of
Ancon Hospital. French taste selected the site, a French nun set out the
first trees and shrubs, and nature has completed a charming picture.]
The fight then against disease on the Isthmus resolved itself largely
into a war of extermination upon the two noxious varieties of
mosquitoes. It involved first a cleaning up, paving and draining of the
two towns. Curiously enough bad smells are not necessarily unhygienic,
but they betoken the existence of matter that breeds disease germs, and
flies and other insects distribute those germs where they will do the
most harm. Colon and Panama therefore were paved and provided with
sewage systems, while somewhat stringent ordinances checked the pleasant
Panama practice of emptying all slops from the front gallery into the
street. It is fair to the Panamanians to note that in the end they will
pay for the vigorous cleaning and refurbishing of their towns by the
Americans. Our sanitary forces did the work and did it well, by virtue
of the clause in the treaty which grants the United States authority to
prosecute such work in the two cities and collect from the householder
its cost by means of water and sewage rates.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
SANITARY WORK IN A VILLAGE
The scene is in the outskirts of Culebra, now a model of cleanliness]
This work was completed in 1908 and the final report of the Division of
Municipal Engineering which conducted it showed that nearly $6,000,000
had been expended, of which about $2,250,000 was for pavements, sewers
and waterworks in the two cities, and about $3,500,000 for work in the
Canal Zone. Nearly a million more was subsequently expended in the
towns.
The first thing to do with the towns was to fumigate them. The
Panamanians did not like this. Neither would we or any other people for
that matter, for the process of fumigating necessarily interrupts the
routine of life, invades domestic privacy, inevitably causes some loss
by the discoloring of fabrics, interrupts trade in the case of stores
and is in general an infernal nuisance. That much any people will say
against wholesale fumigation. But to the Panamanians it was peculiarly
offensive because they were immune from yellow fever anyway, and to some
extent from malaria as well, so to their minds the whole thing was an
imposition by which the Americans alone would profit. If the gringoes
weren’t able to live in Panama without smoking people out of house and
home, they had better stay away was the generally expressed public
opinion of Panama.
Here the peculiar personality of Col. Gorgas came into play. Had that
gentleman not been a great health officer he would have made a notable
diplomat, particularly in these new days when tact and charm of manner
are considered more essential to an American diplomat than dollars. He
went among the people of the two towns, argued, jollied and cajoled them
until a work which it was thought might have to be accomplished at the
point of the bayonet was finished with but little friction. The bayonet
was always in the background, however, for the treaty gives the United
States unqualified authority to enforce its sanitary ordinances in the
cities of Colon and Panama. We can send a regiment if necessary to
compel a man to keep his yard clean--which is perhaps more than we could
do in some benighted towns of our own United States.
The tone of the man in the street toward these American innovations is
partly surly, partly jocular. In Panama he will show you a very
considerable section of the town which is not yet fully rebuilt and
insist that the fire which started it was caused by the “fool
fumigators”. There is some difference of opinion as to the origin of
this blaze, and the matter of damages is, as I write, in the hands of
arbitrators, but the native opinion is solidly against the fumigating
torch bearers. On the subject of the extermination of mosquitoes the
native is always humorous. He will describe to you Col. Gorgas’s trained
bloodhounds and Old Sleuths tracking the criminal _stegomyia_ to his
lair; the corps of bearers of machetes and chloroform who follow to put
an end to the malevolent mosquito’s days; the scientist with the
high-powered microscope who examines the remains and, if he finds the
deceased carried germs, the wide search made for individuals whom he may
have bitten that they may be segregated and put under proper treatment.
[Illustration: THE MOSQUITO CHLOROFORMER’S OUTFIT
Used in tracking the criminal _stegomyia_ to his lair]
In reality there is a certain humor in this scientific bug hunting. You
are at afternoon tea with a hostess in one of the charming tropical
houses which the Commission supplies to its workers. The eyes of your
hostess suddenly become fixed in a terrified gaze.
“Goodness gracious”! she exclaims, “look there”!
“What? where”? you cry, bounding from your seat in excitement. Perhaps a
blast has just boomed on the circumambient air and you have visions of a
fifty-pound rock about to fly through the drawing-room window. Life on
the Zone abounds in such incidents.
[Illustration: _Photo by Dr. Orenstein_
THE MOSQUITO CHLOROFORMER AT WORK
Once subdued by chloroform the mosquito is removed for analysis]
“There”! dramatically. “That mosquito”!
“I’ll swat it”, you cry valorously, remembering the slogan of “Swat the
Fly” which breaks forth recurrently in our newspapers every spring,
though they are quite calm and unperturbed about the places which breed
flies faster than they can be swatted.
“Goodness, no. I must telephone the department”.
Speechless with amazement you wonder if the police or fire department is
to be called out to cope with this mosquito. In due time there appears
an official equipped with an electric flash-light, a phial and a small
bottle of chloroform. The malefactor--no, the suspect, for the
_anopheles malefactor_ does no evil despite his sinister name--is
mercifully chloroformed and deposited in the phial for a later post
mortem. With his flash-light the inspector examines all the dark places
of the house to seek for possible accomplices, and having learned that
nobody has been bitten takes himself off.
[Illustration: ANCON HOSPITAL AS RECEIVED FROM THE FRENCH]
It does seem a ridiculous amount of fuss about a mosquito, doesn’t it?
But since that sort of thing has been done on the Zone death carts no
longer make their dismal rounds for the night’s quota of the dead, and
the ravages of malaria are no longer so general or so deadly as they
were.
Nowadays there are no cases of yellow fever developing on the Zone, but
in the earlier days when one did occur the sanitary officials set out to
find the cause of infection. When the French seek to detect a criminal
they follow the maxim “_Cherchez la femme_” (Look for the woman). When
pursuing the yellow-fever germ to its source the Panama inspectors look
for the _stegomyia_ mosquito that bit the victim--which is a little
reminiscent of hunting for a needle in a haystack.
A drunken man picked up on the street in Panama was taken to the
hospital and there died of yellow fever. He was a stranger but his hotel
was looked up and proved to be a native house occupied only by immunes,
so that he could not have been infected there. Nobody seemed to care
particularly about the deceased, who was buried as speedily as possible,
but the Sanitary Department did care about the source of his malady.
Looking up his haunts it was discovered that he was much seen in company
with an Italian. Thereupon all the Italians in town were interrogated;
one declared he had seen the dead man in company with the man who tended
bar at the theater. This worthy citizen was sought out and was
discovered hiding away in a secluded lodging sick with yellow fever.
Whereupon the theater was promptly fumigated as the center of infection.
Clearing up and keeping clean the two centers of population was,
however, the least of the work of sanitation. The whole Isthmus was a
breeding place for the mosquitoes. Obviously every foot of it could not
be drained clear of pools and rivulets, but the preventive campaign of
the sanitation men covered scores of square miles adjacent to villages
and the Canal bed, and was marvelously effective in reducing the number
of mosquitoes. Away from the towns the campaign was chiefly against the
malarial mosquito--the _anophelinæ_. The yellow fever mosquito, the
_stegomyia_, is a town-bred insect coming from cisterns, water pitchers,
tin cans, fountains in the parks, water-filled pans used to keep ants
from the legs of furniture and the like. It is even said to breed in the
holy-water fonts of the multitudinous churches of Panama, and the
sanitary officials secured the co-operation of the church authorities in
having those receptacles kept fresh. The malarial mosquito however
breeds in streams, marshes and pools and will travel sometimes a mile
and a half from his birth-place looking for trouble.
As you ride in a train across the Isthmus you will often see far from
any human habitation a blackened barrel on a board crossing some little
brook a few inches wide. If you have time to look carefully you will see
that the edges of the gully through which the brook runs have been swept
clear of grass by scythe or fire or both, and that the banks of the
rivulet are blackened as though by a tar-brush while the water itself is
covered by a black and greasy film.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE CANAL COMMISSION HOSPITAL AT COLON BUILT BY THE FRENCH]
This is one of the outposts of the army of health. Of them there are
several hundred, perhaps thousands, scattered through the Zone. The
barrel is filled with a certain fluid combination of oil and divers
chemicals called larvacide. Day and night with monotonous regularity it
falls drop by drop into the rivulet, spreads over its surface and is
deposited on the pebbles on the banks. The mosquito larvæ below must
come to the surface to breathe. There they meet with the noxious fluid
and at the first breath are slain. Automatically this one barrel makes
that stream a charnel house for mosquito larvæ. But up and down
throughout the land go men with cans of the oil on their backs and
sprinklers in their hands seeking for pools and stagnant puddles which
they spray with the larvacide. So between the war on the larva at its
breeding point and the system of screening off all residences, offices
and eating places the malarial infection has been greatly reduced. It
has not been eradicated by any manner of means. The Panama cocktail
(quinine) is still served with meals. In one year 2307.66 pounds of the
drug were served out. But if not wholly obliterated the ailment has been
greatly checked. Dr. A. J. Orenstein, of the Department of Sanitation,
says in summing up the results of the policy:
[Illustration: FRENCH VILLAGE OF EMPIRE AFTER CLEANING UP BY AMERICANS]
[Illustration: THE BAY OF TABOGA FROM THE SANITARIUM]
“The campaign against malaria was inaugurated on the following plan: (1)
Treatment with adequate doses of quinine (about 30 grains a day for
adults) of all cases of malaria. First, because this treatment is
curative; and, second, because unless so treated, each case of malaria
constitutes a focus from which malaria spreads. In malarial regions
there are many persons who have what is often spoken of as chronic
malaria. Such individuals frequently do not suffer any serious
inconvenience. They more often suffer from occasional headaches, anemia
or slight fever. These are the people most dangerous from the standpoint
of the sanitarian. It is in the blood of these individuals that the
malaria-causing parasite has attained the form in which, if taken by a
female _anopheline_, it develops within this mosquito into the form
capable of causing malaria in the individual whom the _anopheline_ may
bite a week or so thereafter. (2) Protecting dwelling with copper wire
gauze against the ingress of mosquitoes. All houses occupied by
Americans and most of the others are screened. (3) Catching and killing
mosquitoes within the dwellings. This is done by negro “mosquito
catchers”, and is of great value in preventing malaria where other
prophylactic measures cannot be inaugurated. (4) Destroying the breeding
places of _anophelinæ_ by filling, draining, and training the banks of
streams. (5) Destroying the _anophelinæ_ in the larval and pupal stages
by oiling the water in which they are found, or applying a special larva
poison to this water. (6) Clearing the rank vegetation in the immediate
vicinity of dwellings and settlements, so as to destroy the shelter for
such mosquitoes as may find their way to the vicinity of the houses; to
hasten evaporation and the drying of small water collections and marshy
places; to expose to view small breeding places and to remove the
temptation to throw water containers into the vegetation.
[Illustration: THE LITTLE PANGO BOATS COME TO MEET YOU]
“These measures, conscientiously and painstakingly carried out, resulted
in reducing the number of malaria cases treated in the hospitals from
6.83 per cent of the working force per month in 1906 to 1.53 per cent of
the working force per month in 1911, and the death from malaria among
employees from 233 in 1906 to 47 in 1911”.
[Illustration: OLD CHURCH AT TABOGA
The square box on the corner of the wall contains the mummied head of a
favorite priest]
[Illustration: THE RIO GRANDE RESERVOIR]
“The malaria sick rate for 1906, if continued to 1911, would give, on
the basis of the number of employees in 1911, about 40,000 cases of
malaria sick in the hospitals for the year, or a loss in labor of about
200,000 days of work. The total number of employees sick in hospitals
with malaria in 1911 was 8946--or a loss of 44,730 days of work. A gain
of about 155,000 days was, therefore, made. Placing the loss to the
Government for each day’s labor, plus treatment, at the rather low
figure of $3 per man, the gain in this one item of saving more than
offset the cost of sanitation proper. These figures do not include
malarial cases treated in the dispensaries and in homes. Among this
class of patients the gain has undoubtedly been proportionate to the
gain in hospital cases, and in addition it must not be forgotten that
malaria is a disease that undermines a man’s health insidiously and
lowers his working efficiency to an extent not approached by any disease
with the possible exception of hook-worm. The less malaria the fewer
inefficient workers in an organization”.
[Illustration: IN PICTURESQUE TABOGA]
Of course the screening system was vital to any successful effort to
control and check the transmission of fever germs by insects. But the
early struggles of Col. Gorgas to get enough wire netting to properly
protect the labor quarters were pathetic. “Why doesn’t he screen in the
whole Isthmus and let it go at that”? inquired one Congressman who
thought it was all intended to put a few more frills on houses for
already highly paid workers. The screening has indeed cost a pretty
penny for only the best copper wire will stand the test of the climate.
At first there was reluctance on the part of disbursing officers to meet
the heavy requirements of Col. Gorgas. But the yellow-fever epidemic of
1905 stopped all that. Thereafter the screening was regarded as much of
an integral part of a house as its shingling.
The efforts that were put forth to make the Canal Zone a liveable spot
have not been relaxed in keeping it so. A glance at the report of the
Chief Sanitary Officer for any year shows something of his continued
activity. You find records of houses fumigated for beriberi, diphtheria,
malaria, leprosy, and a dozen other evils. The number of rats killed is
gravely enumerated--during the year 1911 for example there were nearly
13,000. It may be noted in passing that the rats distribute fleas and
fleas carry the germs of the bubonic plague, hence the slaughter.
Incidentally guests of the native hotels in Panama City say that the
destruction was far from complete.
[Illustration: IN THE GROUNDS OF ANCON HOSPITAL]
Two large hospitals are maintained by the Canal Commission at Colon and
at Ancon, together with smaller ones for emergency cases at Culebra and
other points along the line. The two principal hospitals will be kept
open after the completion of the Canal, but not of course to their full
capacity. Ancon alone has accommodations for more than 1500 patients,
and when the army of labor has left the Zone there can be no possible
demand for so great an infirmary. Both of these hospitals were inherited
from the French, and the one at Colon has been left much in the
condition they delivered it in, save for needed repairs and alterations.
Its capacity has not been materially increased. The Ancon Hospital
however has become one of the great institutions of its kind in the
world. The French gave us a few buildings with over 300 patients
sheltered in tents. The Americans developed this place until now more
than fifty buildings are ranged along the side of Ancon Hill. When the
French first established the hospital they installed as nurses a number
of sisters of St. Vincent with Sister Rouleau as Sister Superior. The
gentle sisters soon died. The yellow fever carried them off with
heart-rending rapidity. Sister Marie however left a monument which will
keep her fair fame alive for many years yet to come. She was a great
lover of plants, and the luxuriance of the tropical foliage was to her a
never-ending charm. To her early efforts is due the beauty of the
grounds of the Ancon Hospital, where one looks between the stately
trunks of the fronded royal palms past a hillside blazing with hibiscus,
and cooled with the rustling of leaves of feather palms and plantains to
where the blue Pacific lies smooth beneath the glowing tropic sun.
Beside the beauty of its surroundings the hospital is eminently
practical in its plan. The many separate buildings permit the
segregation of cases, and the most complete and scientific ventilation.
[Illustration: THE SANITARIUM AT TABOGA INHERITED FROM THE FRENCH]
Making the hospital attractive was one of the points insisted upon by
Col. Gorgas. Some of the doctors think that possibly it has been a wee
bit overdone. Some of the folks along the Zone look on a brief space
spent in the hospital as a pleasant interlude in an otherwise monotonous
life. As they have thirty days’ sick leave with pay every year they are
quite prone to turn to the pleasant slopes of Ancon Hill, with a week at
the charming sanitarium on Taboga Island as a fitting close--a sort of
café parfait to top off the feast. Surgery even seems to have lost its
terrors there. “Why, they even bring their friends to be operated on”,
said one of the surgeons laughingly when talking of the popularity of
the hospital among the Zone dwellers.
[Illustration: A FETE DAY AT TABOGA]
[Illustration: FEATHER PALM AT ANCON]
Charity cases have numbered as many as 66,000 a year and the records
show that during the period of greatest activity on the Zone as many as
70 different nationalities were ministered to. The question of color was
often an embarrassing one. The gradations of shades between pure white
to darkest African is so exceedingly delicate in Panama that there is
always difficulty in determining whether the subject under consideration
belongs to the “gold” or the “silver” class, for the words black and
white are tactfully avoided in the Zone in their reference to
complexions. “This is my plan”, said Col. Mason in charge of the
hospital. “On certain days the patients are allowed visitors. When the
color of the inmate is problematical, as is usually the case with women,
I ask if she wants her husband to visit her. If she does and he proves
to be a negro, she goes into the colored ward. If she still insists that
she is white, she can go into the white ward, but must dispense with his
visits”.
Under our treaty the Zone sanitary department takes charge of the insane
of Colon and Panama, and a very considerable share of the grounds at
Ancon is divided off with barbed wire for their use. The number of
patients runs well into the hundreds, with very few Americans. Most are
Jamaica negroes and the hospital authorities say that they are mentally
unbalanced by the rush and excitement of life on the Zone. I never
happened to see a Jamaica negro excited unless it happened to be a
Tivoli Hotel waiter confronted with the awful responsibility of an extra
guest at table. Then the excitement took the form of deep melancholy,
exaggerated lethargy, and signs of suicidal mania in every facial
expression.
Beside the hospital service the sanitary department maintains
dispensaries at several points on the line, where necessary drugs are
provided for patients in the Commission Service free. Patent medicines
are frowned upon, and such as are purveyed must be bought through the
Commissary. Medical service is free to employees and their families. All
doctors practicing on the Zone are on the gold payroll for wages ranging
from $1800 to $7000 a year. I could not find upon inquiry that the fact
that they were not dependent upon the patient for payment made the
doctors less alert or sympathetic. At least no complaints to that effect
were current.
To my mind the most notable effect upon the life of the Zone of this
system of free medical attendance was that it added one more to the many
inducements to matrimony. Infantile colic and measles are shorn of much
of their terror to the young parent when no doctor’s bill attends them.
Incidentally, too, the benevolent administration looks after the teeth
of the employees as a part of its care of their general health. One
effect of this is to impress the visitor with the remarkable number of
incisors gleaming with fresh gold visible where Zone folk are gathered
together.
[Illustration: TABOGA FROM THE BATHING BEACH]
The annual vacations of the workers during the construction period may
properly be considered in connection with sanitation work on the Zone,
for they were not permitted to be mere loafing time. The man who took a
vacation was not allowed to stay on the Isthmus. If he tried to stay
there Col. Goethals found it out in that omniscient fashion of his and
it was a case of hike for a change of air or go back to work. For,
notwithstanding the fact that Col. Gorgas pulled the teeth of the
tropics with his sanitary devices and regulations, an uninterrupted
residence in that climate does break down the stamina and enfeeble the
energy of men from more temperate climes. Every employee was given 42
days’ vacation with full pay, but he had to quit the Zone for some
country which would afford a beneficial climatic change. Of course most
went back to the United States, being encouraged thereto by a special
rate on the steamship of $30--the regular rate being $75. But beside
this vacation each employee was entitled to 30 days’ sick leave. It was
not an exceedingly difficult task to conjure up enough symptoms to
persuade a friendly physician to issue a sick order. The favorite method
of enjoying this respite from work was to spend as little of the time as
possible at Ancon, and the rest at the sanitarium on the Island of
Taboga.
[Illustration: TABOGA IS FURTHERMORE THE CONEY ISLAND OF PANAMA]
That garden spot in the Bay of Panama where the French left the
sanitarium building we now use is worth a brief description. You go
thither in a small steamboat from Balboa or Panama and after about three
hours’ steaming a flock of little white boats, each with a single
oarsman, puts out from the shore to meet you like a flock of gulls as
you drop anchor in a bay of truly Mediterranean hue. To the traveled
visitor the scene is irresistibly reminiscent of some little port of
Southern Italy, and the reminder is all the more vivid when one gets
ashore and finds the narrow ways betwixt the elbowing houses quite
Neapolitan for dirt and ill odor. But from the sea one looks upon a
towering hill, bare toward its summit, closely covered lower down by
mango, wild fig, and ceiba trees, bordered just above the red roofs of
the little town by a fringe of the graceful cocoanut palms. Then come
the houses, row below row, until they descend to the curving beach
where the fishing boats are drawn up out of reach of the tide which
rises some 20 feet.
From the bay the village with its red-tiled roofs and yellow-white walls
looks substantial, a bit like Villefranche, the port of Nice, but this
impression is speedily dispelled when one lands in one of the boats,
propelled by the oarsman standing and facing the bow--a fashion seldom
seen save in Italian waters. For seen near at hand the houses are
discovered to be of the flimsiest frame construction, save for a few
clustering about the little church and sharing with it a general
decrepitude and down-at-the-heels air that makes us think they have seen
better days. As indeed they have and worse days too, for Taboga once
shared in the prosperity of the early Spanish rule, and enjoyed the
honor of having entertained for a few weeks Sir Henry Morgan, that
murderous pirate, who later became a baronet and a colonial governor, as
a fine finish after his deeds of piracy and rapine. Taboga must have
treated the buccaneer well, for not only did he forbear to sack the
town, but so deep was the devotion paid by him and his men to certain
tuns of excellent wine there discovered that they let a Spanish galleon,
deep-laden with gold and silver, slip through their fingers rather than
interrupt their drinking bout.
Tradition has it that the galleon was sunk nearby to save it and its
cargo from the pirates, and treasure seekers have been hunting it ever
since with the luck that ordinarily attends aspirants for dead men’s
gold.
[Illustration: BURDEN BEARERS ON THE SAVANNA]
Just now the wine and wassail of Taboga is limited to about six grog
shops, which seems an oversupply for the handful of fishermen who
inhabit its tumble-down hovels. Each bar, too, has its billiard table
and one is reminded of Mark Twain’s islands in the South Sea where the
people earned an honest living by taking in each other’s washing. One
wonders if the sole industry of the Tabogans is playing billiards. There
is indeed little to support the town save fishing, and that, if one may
judge from specimens carried through the lanes, must be good. Some of
the boats at anchor or drawn up on the beach attest to some prosperity
amongst them that go down to the sea in ships. One that I saw rigged
with a fore-and-aft sail and a jigger was hewn out of a single log like
a river cayuca and had a beam exceeding four feet. Before many of the
houses were lines hung with long strips of fish hanging out to dry, for
it is a curious property of this atmosphere that despite its humidity it
will cure animal tissues, both fish and flesh, quickly and without
taint.
[Illustration: HOTEL AT BOUQUETTE, CHIRIQUI
The only point in Panama at which Canal employees may spend their
vacations]
Agriculture in Taboga is limited to the culture of the pineapple, and
the local variety is so highly esteemed in the Panama markets that some
measure of prosperity might attend upon the Tabogans would they but
undertake the raising of pines systematically and extensively. But not
they. Their town was founded in 1549 when, at the instance of Las Casas,
the King of Spain gave freedom to all Indian slaves. Taboga was set
apart as a residence for a certain part of these freedmen. Now what did
the freedom from slavery mean but freedom from work? This view was
probably held in the 16th century and certainly obtains in Taboga today,
having been enhanced no doubt by the liberal mixture of negro blood with
that of the native Indians. If the pineapples grow without too much
attention well and good. They will be sold and the grog shops will know
that real money has come into town. But as for seriously extending the
business--well, that is a thing to think of for a long, long time and
the thought has not yet ripened. It is a wonder that the Chinese who
hold the retail trade of the island and who are painstaking gardeners
have not taken up this industry.
[Illustration: A BIT OF ANCON HOSPITAL GROUNDS]
We may laugh at the easy-going Tabogan if we will, but I do not think
that anyone will come out of his church without a certain respect for
his real religious sentiment. ’Tis but a little church, of stuccoed
rubble, fallen badly into decay, flanked by a square tower holding two
bells, and penetrated by so winding and narrow a stair that one
ascending it may feel as a corkscrew penetrating a cork.
But within it shows signs of a reverent affection by its flock not
common in Latin-American churches. We may laugh a little at the altar
decorations which are certainly not costly and may be a little tawdry,
but they show evidences of patient work on the part of the women, and
contributions by the men from the slender gains permitted them by the
harsh land and the reluctant sea. About the walls hang memorial tablets,
not richly sculptured indeed, but showing a pious desire on the part of
bygone generations to have the virtue of their loved ones commemorated
within hallowed walls. Standing in a side aisle was an effigy of Christ,
of human size, bearing the cross up the hill of Gethsemane. The figure
stood on a sort of platform, surrounded by six quaint lanterns of panes
of glass set in leaded frames of a design seen in the street lamps of
the earlier Spanish cities. The platform was on poles for bearers, after
the fashion of a sedan chair, and we learned from one who, more
fortunate than we, had been there to see, that in Holy Week there is a
sort of Passion Play--rude and elementary it is true, but bringing to
the surface all the religious emotionalism of the simple people. The
village is crowded with the faithful from afar, who make light of any
lack of shelter in that kindly tropic air. The Taboga young men dress as
Roman soldiers, the village maidens take their parts in the simple
pageant. The floats, such as the one we saw, are borne up and down the
village streets which no horse could ever tread, and the church is
crowded with devotional worshipers until Easter comes with the joyous
tidings of the Resurrection.
[Illustration: THE CHIEF INDUSTRY OF THE NATIVES IS FISHING]
[Illustration: NURSES’ QUARTERS AT ANCON]
As to the part of Taboga in the economy of the Canal work, we have there
a sanitarium inherited from the French, and used as a place of
convalescence for almost recovered patients from the hospitals of the
Zone. After breathing the clear, soft air, glancing at the comfortable
quarters and enjoying to the fullest a lunch costing fifty cents that
would put Broadway’s best to the test, and make the expensive Tivoli
dining-room seem unappetizing in comparison, we could well understand
why every employee with thirty days’ sick leave to his credit gets just
such a slight ailment as needs a rest at Taboga for its cure.
Near Taboga is the leper hospital and the steamer stops for a moment to
send ashore supplies in a small boat. Always there are about 75 victims
of this dread and incurable disease there, mostly Panamanians with some
West India negroes. A native of North America with the disease is
practically unknown. The affliction is horrible enough in itself, but
some cause operating for ages back has caused mankind to regard it with
more fear than the facts justify. It is not readily communicable to
healthy persons, even personal contact with a leper not necessarily
causing infection unless there be some scratch or wound on the person of
the healthy individual into which the virus may enter. Visitors to the
Isthmus, who find interest in the spectacle of hopeless human suffering,
frequently visit the colony without marked precautions and with no
reported case of infection.
To what extent the sanitation system so painstakingly built up by Col.
Gorgas and his associates will be continued after the seal “complete”
shall be stamped upon the Canal work, and the workers scattered to all
parts of the land, is not now determined. Panama and Colon will, of
course, be kept up to their present standards, but whether the war
against the malarial mosquito will be pursued in the jungle as it is
today when the health of 40,000 human beings is dependent upon it is
another question. The plan of the army authorities is to abandon the
Zone to nature--which presumably includes the _anopheles_. Whether that
plan shall prevail or whether the United States shall maintain it as an
object lesson in government, including sanitation, is a matter yet to be
determined. In a hearing before a congressional committee in 1913 Col.
Gorgas estimated the cost for a system of permanent sanitation for the
Zone, including the quarantine, at $90,000 a year. As his total
estimates for the years 1913-14 amounted to $524,000, this is indicative
of a very decided abandonment of activity in sanitary work.
[Illustration: THE LEPER SETTLEMENT ON PANAMA BAY]
At all times during his campaign against the forces of fever and
infection Col. Gorgas has had to meet the opposition charge of
extravagance and the waste of money. It has been flippantly asserted
that it cost him $5 to kill a mosquito--of course an utterly baseless
assertion, but one which is readily met by the truth that the bite of a
single infected mosquito has more than once cost a life worth many
thousand times five dollars. To fix precisely the cost of bringing the
Zone to its present state of healthfulness is impossible, because the
activities of the sanitary department comprehended many functions in
addition to the actual work of sanitation. Col. Gorgas figures that the
average expenses of sanitation during the whole construction period were
about $365,000 a year and he points out that for the same period Chicago
spent $600,000 without any quarantine or mosquito work. The total
expenditures for sanitation when the Canal is finished will have
amounted to less than one per cent of the cost of that great public work
and without this sanitation the Canal could never have been built. That
simple statement of fact seems sufficiently to cover the contribution of
Col. Gorgas to the work, and to measure the credit he deserves for its
completion.
CHAPTER XV
THE REPUBLIC OF PANAMA
The Republic of Panama has an area of from 30,000 to 35,000 square
miles, roughly approximating that of the state of Indiana. No complete
survey of the country has ever been made and there is pending now a
boundary dispute with Costa Rica in which the United States is
arbitrator. The only other boundary, not formed by the sea, is that at
which Panama and Colombia join. But Colombia says there is no boundary
at all, but that Panama is one of her provinces in a state of rebellion.
So the real size and bounds of the Republic must be set down as somewhat
indeterminate.
The circumstances under which Panama became an independent nation have
been set forth in an earlier chapter. It is safe to say that with the
heavy investment made by the United States in the Canal Zone, on the
strength of a treaty with the infant republic, the sovereignty of Panama
will be forever maintained against all comers--except the United States
itself. There are political philosophers who think that the Isthmus
state may yet be the southern boundary of the Great Republic of the
North. For the present however Uncle Sam is quite content with the Canal
Zone and a certain amount of diplomatic influence over the government of
Panama.
[Illustration: THE GORGE OF SALAMANCA]
Panama is divided into seven provinces, Bocas del Toro, Cocle, Colon,
Chiriqui, Los Santos, Panama and Veragua. Its total population by the
census of 1911 was 386,749, a trifle more than the District of Columbia
which has about one five-thousandth of its area, and almost precisely
the same population as Montana which has less than half its size. So it
is clearly not over-populated. Of its population 51,323 are set down by
its own census takers as white, 191,933 as mestizo, or a cross between
white and Indian, 48,967 as negro; 2313 Mongol, and 14,128 Indian. The
census takers estimated that other Indians, living in barbarism remote
from civilization and unapproachable by the enumerators, numbered
36,138.
[Illustration: NATIVE FAMILY IN CHORRERA]
All these figures have to be qualified somewhat. The mestizos are
theoretically a cross between whites and Indians, but the negro blood is
very generally present. It is doubtful, too, whether those classed as
white are not often of mixed blood.
A singularly large proportion of the population lives in the towns. In
12 towns, exceeding 7000 inhabitants each, are more than 150,000 people.
More than one-third of the people therefore are town dwellers, which is
to say they are unproductive citizens. Meanwhile more than five-eighths
of the arable land in the country is not under cultivation.
The five chief towns of Panama with their population in 1911 are:
Panama 37,505
Colon 17,748
David 15,059
Santiago 13,081
Bocas del Toro 9,759
Of these towns David is the capital of the Chiriqui province, the
portion of the republic in which cattle growing and agriculture have
been most developed. Bocas del Toro is a banana port, dependent upon
that nutritious fruit for its very existence, and the center of the
business of the United Fruit Company in Panama. At present the former
town is reached by a 300 mile water trip from Panama City; the latter by
boat from Colon. The government has under way plans for a railroad from
Panama to David which give every indication of being consummated.
[Illustration: A STREET IN PENENOME]
The soil of the Republic differs widely in its varying sections, from
the rich vegetable loam of the lowlands along the Atlantic Coast, the
outcome of years of falling leaves and twigs from the trees to the swamp
below, to the high dry lands of the savannas and the hillsides of the
Chiriqui province. All are undeniably fertile, that is demonstrated by
the rapid and rank growth of the jungle. But opinions differ as to the
extent to which they are available for useful agriculture. Some hold
that the jungle soil is so rich that the plants run to wood and leaves
to the exclusion of fruits. Others declare that on the hillsides the
heavy rains of the rainy seasons wash away the surface soil leaving only
the harsh and arid substratum. This theory seems to be overthrown by the
fact that it is rare to see a hillside in all Panama not covered with
dense vegetation. A fact that is well worth bearing in mind is that
there has never been a systematic and scientific effort to utilize any
part of the soil of Panama for productive purposes that has not been a
success. The United Fruit Company in its plantations about Bocas del
Toro has developed a fruitful province and created a prosperous town. In
the province of Cocle a German company has set out about 75,000 cacao
trees, 50,000 coffee bushes and 25,000 rubber trees, all of which have
made good progress.
[Illustration: THE HOTEL AT DAVID]
The obstacles in the path of the fuller development of the national
resources of Panama have sprung wholly from the nature of its
population. The Indian is, of course, not primarily an agriculturist,
not a developer of the possibilities of the land he inhabits. The
Spanish infusion brought to the native population no qualities of
energy, of well-directed effort, of the laborious determination to build
up a new and thriving commonwealth. Spanish ideals run directly counter
to those involved in empire building. Such energy, such determination as
built up our great northwest and is building in British Columbia the
greatest agricultural empire in the world, despite seven months annually
of drifting snow and frozen ground, would make of the Panama savannas
and valleys the garden spot of the world. That will never be
accomplished by the present agrarian population, but it is incredible
that with population absorbing and overrunning the available
agricultural lands of other zones, the tropics should long be left
dormant in control of a lethargic and indolent people.
[Illustration: VIEW OF BOCAS DEL TORO]
[Illustration: _Photo by Critchlow_
VISTA ON THE RIO GRANDE]
Benjamin Kidd, in his stimulative book, “Social Evolution”, says on this
subject:
“With the filling up to the full limit of the remaining territories
suitable for European occupation, and the growing pressure of population
therein, it may be expected that the inexpediency of allowing a great
extent of territory in the richest region of the globe--that comprised
within the tropics--to remain undeveloped, with its resources running
largely to waste under the management of races of low social efficiency,
will be brought home with ever-growing force to the minds of the Western
(Northern) peoples. The day is probably not far distant when, with the
advance science is making, we shall recognize that it is in the tropics
and not in the temperate zones we have the greatest food-producing and
material-producing regions of the earth; that the natural highways of
commerce in the world are those which run north and south; and that we
have the highest possible interest in the proper development and
efficient administration of the tropical regions, and in an exchange of
products therewith on a far larger scale than has yet been attempted or
imagined.... It will probably be made clear, and that at no distant
date, that the last thing our civilization is likely to permanently
tolerate is the wasting of the resources of the richest regions of the
earth through lack of the elementary qualities of social efficiency in
the races possessing them”.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
AT THE CATTLE PORT OF AGUADULCE
This is one of the chief shipping points for the cattle ranches of
Chiriqui. The industry is one little developed]
Some of the modern psychologists who are so expert in solving the
riddles of human consciousness that they hardly hesitate to approach the
supreme problem of life after death may perhaps determine whether the
indolence of the Panamanian is racial, climatic, or merely bred of
consciousness that he does not have to work hard in order to get all the
comforts of which he has knowledge. The life-story of an imaginary
couple will serve as the short and simple annals of tens of thousands of
Panama’s poor:
[Illustration: THE ROYAL ROAD NEAR PANAMA]
Miguel lived on the banks of the Chagres River, about half way between
Cruces and Alhajuela. To him Cruces was a city. Were there not at least
thirty huts of bamboo and clay thatched with palmetto like the one in
which he lived? Was there not a church of sawn boards, with an altar to
which a priest came twice a month to say mass, and a school where a
gringo taught the children strange things in the hated English tongue?
Where he lived there was no other hut within two or three hours poling
up the river, but down at Cruces the houses were so close together you
could almost reach one while sitting in the shade of another. At home
after dark you only heard the cry of the whippoorwill, or occasionally
the wail of a tiger cat in the jungle, but at Cruces there was always
the loud talk of the men in the cantina, and a tom-tom dance at least
once a week, when everybody sat up till dawn dancing to the beat of the
drums and drinking the good rum that made them all so jolly.
But greater than Cruces was the Yankee town of Matachin down on the
banks of the river where the crazy Americans said there was going to be
a lake that some day would cover all the country, and drown out Cruces
and even his father’s house. They were paying all the natives along the
river for their lands that would be sunken, and the people were taking
the pesos gladly and spending them gaily. They did not trouble to move
away. Many years ago the French too said there would be a lake, but it
never came and the French suddenly disappeared. The Americans would
vanish the same way, and a good thing, too, for their thunderous noises
where they were working frightened away all the good game, and you could
hardly find an iguana, or a wild hog in a day’s hunting.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE MEETING PLACE OF THE CAYUCAS]
Once a week Miguel’s father went down to market at Matachin, and
sometimes the boy went along. The long, narrow cayuca was loaded with
oranges, bananas and yams, all covered with big banana leaves, and with
Miguel in the bow and his father in the stern the voyage commenced.
Going down stream was easy enough, and the canoists plied their paddles
idly, trusting chiefly to the current to carry them along. But coming
back would be the real work, then they would have to bend to their poles
and push savagely to force the boat along. At places they would have to
get overboard and fairly carry the boat through the swift, shallow
rapids. But Miguel welcomed the work for it showed him the wonders of
Matachin, where great iron machines rushed along like horses, drawing
long trains of cars; where more people worked with shovels tending queer
machines than there were in ten towns like Cruces; where folk gave pesos
for bananas and gave cloth, powder and shot, things to eat in cans, and
rum in big bottles for the pesos again. It was an exciting place this
Matachin and made Miguel understand what the gringoes meant when they
talked about New York, Chicago and other cities like it.
[Illustration: BANANA MARKET AT MATACHIN]
When he grew older Miguel worked awhile for the men who were digging
away all this dirt, and earned enough to buy himself a machete and a gun
and a few ornaments for a girl named Maria who lived in another hut near
the river. But what was the use of working in that mad way--picking up
your shovel when a whistle blew and toiling away until it blew again,
with a boss always scolding at you and ready with a kick if you tried to
take a little siesta. The pesos once a week were good, that was true. If
you worked long enough you might get enough to buy one of those boxes
that made music, but _quien sabe?_ It might get broken anyway, and the
iguanas in the jungle, the fish in the river and the yams and bananas in
the clearing needed no silver to come to his table. Besides he was
preparing to become a man of family. Maria was quite willing, and so one
day they strolled off together hand in hand to a clearing Miguel had
made with his machete on the river bank. With that same useful tool he
cut some wooden posts, set them erect in the ground and covered them
with a heavy thatch of palmetto leaves impervious to sun or rain. The
sides of the shelter were left open during the first months of wedded
life. Later perhaps, when they had time they would go to Cruces at the
period of the priest’s regular visit and get regularly married. When the
rainy season came on and walls were as necessary as a roof against the
driving rain, they would build a little better. When that time came he
would set ten stout uprights of bamboo in the ground in the shape of an
oblong, and across the tops would fasten six cross pieces of girders
with withes of vine well soaked to make them pliable. This would make
the frame of the first floor of his house. The walls he would make by
weaving reeds, or young bamboo stalks in and out betwixt the posts until
a fairly tight basketwork filled the space. This was then plastered
outside with clay. The dirt, which in time would be stamped down hard,
formed the floor. For his second story a tent-shaped frame of lighter
bamboo tightly tied together was fastened to the posts, and cane was
tied to each of the rafters as we nail laths to scantling. Thus a strong
peaked roof, about eight feet high from the second floor to the
ridgepole was constructed, and thatched with palm leaves. Its angle
being exceedingly steep it sheds water in the fierce tropic rain storms.
The floor of the second story is made of bamboo poles laid transversely,
and covered heavily with rushes and palmetto. This is used only as the
family sleeping apartment, and to give access to it Miguel takes an
8-inch bamboo and cuts notches in it, into which the prehensile toes of
his family may fit as they clamber up to the land of Nod. Furniture to
the chamber floor there is none. The family herd together like so many
squirrels, and with the bamboo climbing pole drawn up there is no danger
of intrusion by the beasts of the field.
[Illustration: IN THE CHIRIQUI COUNTRY]
In the typical Indian hut there is no furniture on the ground floor
other than a rough hewn bench, a few pieces of pottery and gourds, iron
cooking vessels and what they call a kitchen, which is in fact a large
flat box with raised edges, about eight square feet in surface and about
as high from the floor as a table. This is filled with sand and slabs of
stone. In it a little fire is built of wood or charcoal, the stones laid
about the fire support the pots and pans and cooking goes on as gaily as
in any modern electric kitchen. The contrivance sounds primitive, but I
have eaten a number of excellent meals cooked on just such an apparatus.
[Illustration: BANANA PLANT; NOTE SIZE OF MAN]
Now it will be noticed that in all this habitation, sufficient for the
needs of an Indian, there is nothing except the iron pots and possibly
some pottery for which money was needed, and there are thousands of
families living in just this fashion in Panama today. True, luxury
approaches in its insidious fashion and here and there you will see a
$1.25 white iron bed on the main floor, real chairs, canned goods on the
shelves and--final evidence of Indian prosperity!--a crayon portrait of
the head of the family and a phonograph, of a make usually discarded at
home. But when Miguel and Maria start out on the journey of life a
machete, a gun and the good will of their neighbors who will lend them
yams until their own planting begins to yield forms a quite sufficient
capital on which to establish their family. Therefore, why work?
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT
A TYPICAL NATIVE HUT
While native architecture is not stately it is artistic in that it
harmonizes with its natural surroundings and is eminently adapted to the
needs of the people who inhabit the huts.]
It is beyond doubt to the ease with which life can be sustained, and the
torpidity of the native imagination which depicts no joys to spur one on
to effort that the unwillingness of the native to do systematic work is
due. And from this difficulty in getting labor follows the fact that
not one quarter of the natural resources of Panama are developed.
Whether the labor problem will be solved by the distribution throughout
the republic of the Caribbean blacks who have worked so well on the Zone
is yet to be seen. It may be possible that because of this the fertile
lands of Panama, or the savannas so admirably fitted for grazing, can
only be utilized by great corporations who will do things on so great a
scale as to justify the importation of labor. Today the man who should
take up a large tract of land in the Chiriqui country with a view to
tilling it would be risking disaster because of the uncertainty of the
labor supply.
[Illustration: CONSTRUCTION OF ROOF OF A NATIVE HOUSE
The photograph is taken looking directly upward from the ground floor]
Another obstacle in the way of foreign settlement of Panama has been the
uncertainty of land titles. Early surveyors seem to have been in the
habit of noting as the identification marks of their lines such volatile
objects as a blackbird in a tree, or such perishable ones as an ant hill
or a decaying stump. Facilities for recording titles also have been ill
arranged. One of the first tasks of the new Republic was to take up this
matter and it has been reduced to fairly systematic form. The Republic
is offering for sale great quantities of public lands long held as
commons by various municipalities. Much of this land lies along the line
of the railroad from Panama to David, and is of varying grades suitable
for grazing, forestry or agriculture. A fixed price of 50 cents per
hectare is charged, a hectare being practically 2¹⁄₂ acres. The
government has gone quite efficiently into the task of disposing of
these lands, and pamphlets explanatory of methods of securing titles,
terms, etc., can be obtained by addressing the Administrator-General at
Panama. The Pan-American Union, of Washington, D. C., has issued a
pamphlet giving a summary in English of the Panamanian law bearing upon
the subject.
[Illustration: A NATIVE LIVING ROOM AND STAIRWAY
By pulling up the bamboo ladder, or turning it, communication with the
upper floor is closed]
With the lack of labor, and the uncertainty of land titles, the final
impediment to the general development of the interior of Panama is to be
found in the lack of roads. It is not that the roads are bad--that is
the case in many of our own commonwealths. But in a great part of Panama
there are literally no roads at all. Trails, choked by the jungle and so
washed by the rains that they are merely lanes floored with boulders,
are the rule. The heavy ox-cart is the only vehicle that will stand the
going, and our light American farm wagons would be speedily racked to
pieces. In the Canal Zone the Commission has built some of the best
roads in the world, utilizing the labor of employees convicted of minor
offenses. Stimulated by this example the Panama government has built one
excellent road from the chief city across the savannas to Old Panama and
thence onward into the interior. It is hoped that the spectacle of the
admirable roads in the Zone will encourage the authorities of the
Republic to go into road building on a large scale in their own country.
In no other way can its possibilities be realized. At present the rivers
afford the surest highways and land abutting them brings higher prices.
[Illustration: RUBBER PLANTATION NEAR COCLE
The planter’s original hut in the foreground. The board cabin with
corrugated iron roof shows prosperity]
David, the largest interior town of Panama, is the central point of the
cattle industry. All around it are woods, or jungles, plentifully
interspersed with broad prairies, or llanos, covered with grass, and on
which no trees grow save here and there a wild fig or a ceibo. Cattle
graze on the llanos, sleek reddish beasts with spreading horns like our
Texas cattle. There are no huge herds as on our western ranges. Droves
of from ten to twenty are about the average among the small owners who
rely on the public range for subsistence. The grass is not sufficiently
nutritious to bring the cattle up to market form, so the small owners
sell to the owners of big ranches who maintain potreros, or fattening
ground sown with better grasses. A range fed steer will fetch $15 to
$18, and after six or eight months on the potrero it will bring $30 to
$35 from the cattle shipper at David. Since the cost of feeding a beeve
for that period is only about one dollar, and as the demand is fairly
steady the profit of the ranchman is a good one. But like all other
industries in Panama, this one is pursued in only a retail way. The
market is great enough to enrich ranchmen who would go into the business
on a large scale, but for some reason none do.
[Illustration: BOLIVAR PARK AT BOCAS DEL TORO]
Passing from llano to llano the road cuts through the forest which
towers dense and impenetrable on either side, broken only here and
there by small clearings made by some native with the indispensable
machete. These in the main are less than four acres. The average
Panamanian farmer will never incur the scriptural curse laid upon them
that lay field unto field. He farms just enough for his daily needs, no
more. The ambition that leads our northern farmer to always covet the
lands on the other side of his boundary fence does not operate in
Panama. One reason is, of course, the aggressiveness of the jungle.
Stubborn to clear away, it is determined in its efforts to regain the
land from which it has been ousted. Such a thing as allowing a field to
lie fallow for two or three years is unknown in Panama. There would be
no field visible for the new jungle growth.
[Illustration: A FORD NEAR ANCON]
Agriculture therefore is conducted in a small way only, except for the
great corporations that have just begun the exploitation of Panama.
Whether the country affords a hopeful field for the individual settler
is at least doubtful. Its climate is excellent. The days are warm but
never scorchingly hot as are customary in Washington and frequent in New
York. The nights are cool. From December to May a steady trade wind
blows over the Isthmus from north to south, carrying away the clouds so
that there is no rain. In this dry season the fruits mature, so that it
corresponds to the northern summer; on the other hand such vegetation as
sheds its leaves, or dies down annually, does so at this season, giving
it a seeming correspondence to the northern winter. In a temperature
sense there is neither summer nor winter, and the variation of the
thermometer is within narrow limits. The highest temperature in years at
Culebra, a typical inland point, was 96 degrees; the lowest 61.
The list of natural products of the Isthmus is impressive in its length
and variety, but for most of them even the home demand is not met or
supplied by the production. Only where some stimulating force from the
outside has intervened, like the United Fruit Company with the banana,
has production been brought up to anything like its possibility. In the
Chiriqui country you can see sugar cane fields that have gone on
producing practically without attention for fifteen seasons. Cornfields
have been worked for half a century without fertilizing or rotation of
crops. The soil there is volcanic detritus washed down during past ages
from the mountainsides, and lies from six to twenty feet thick. It will
grow anything that needs no frost, but the province supports less than
four people to the square mile, nine-tenths of the land is unbroken and
Panama imports fruit from Jamaica, sugar from Cuba and tobacco and food
stuffs from the United States.
[Illustration: OLD BANANA TREES]
[Illustration: PINEAPPLES IN THE FIELD]
The fruits of Panama are the orange, which grows wild and for the proper
cultivation of which no effort has been made, which is equally the case
with the lemon and the lime; the banana, which plays so large a part in
the economic development of the country that I shall treat of it at
length later; the pineapple, cultivated in a haphazard way, still
attains so high an order of excellence that Taboga pines are the
standard for lusciousness; the mango, which grows in clusters so dense
that the very trees bend under their weight, but for which as yet little
market has been found, as they require an acquired taste; the mamei,
hard to ship and difficult to eat because of its construction but withal
a toothsome fruit; the paypaya, a melon not unlike our cantaloupe which
has the eccentricity of growing on trees; the sapodillo, a fruit of
excellent flavor tasting not unlike a ripe persimmon, but containing no
pit. With cultivation all of these fruits could be grown in great
quantities in all parts of the Republic, but to give them any economic
importance some special arrangement for their regular and speedy
marketing would have to be made, as with the banana, most of them being
by nature extremely perishable.
Northern companies are finding some profit in exploiting such natural
resources of Panama as are available in their wild state. Of these the
most promising is rubber, the tree being found in practically every part
of the country. One concern, the Boston-Panama Company, has an estate
approximating 400 square miles on which are about 100,000 wild rubber
trees, and which is being further developed by the planting of bananas,
pineapples, cocoanuts and other tropical fruits.
[Illustration: WAITING FOR THE BOAT]
Coffee, sugar and cacao are raised on the Isthmus, but of the two former
not enough to supply the local demand. The development of the cacao
industry to large proportions seems probable, as several foreign
corporations are experimenting on a considerable scale. Cocoanuts are
easily grown along both coasts of the Isthmus. A new grove takes about
five years to come into bearing, costing an average of about three
dollars a tree. Once established the trees bring in a revenue of about
one dollar each at present prices and, as the demand for Panama
cocoanuts is steady, the industry seems to offer attractive
possibilities. The groves must be near the coast, as the cocoanut tree
needs salt air to reach its best estate. Given the right atmospheric
conditions they will thrive where no other plant will take root. Growing
at the edge of the sea, water transportation is easy.
[Illustration: COUNTRY HOUSE OF A CACAO PLANTER AT CHORIA
This industry is in its infancy in Panama, but promises to be a
considerable resource]
[Illustration: STARTED FOR MARKET]
There is still much land available for cocoanut planting, though but
little of it is government land. Both coasts are fit for this industry,
unlike the banana industry, which thrives only on the Atlantic shore.
Panama is outside of the hurricane belt, which gives an added advantage
to the cocoanut planter. Elsewhere in the Caribbean the trees suffer
severely from the high winds.
The lumber of Panama will in time come to be one of its richest assets.
In the dense forests hardwoods of a dozen varieties or more are to be
found, but as yet the cost of getting it out is prohibitive in most
sections. Only those forests adjacent to streams are economically
valuable and such activity as is shown is mainly along the Bayano,
Chucunaque, and Tuyra Rivers. The list of woods is almost interminable.
The prospectus of one of the companies with an extended territory on the
Bayano River notes eighteen varieties of timber, commercially valuable
on its territory. Among those the names of which are unfamiliar are the
espavé (sometimes spelled espevé), the cocobolo, the espinosa cedar, the
zoro and the sangre. All are hard woods serviceable in cabinet making.
The espavé is as hard as mahogany and of similar color and marking. The
trees will run four to five feet thick at the stump with saw timber 60
to 70 feet in length. Espinosa trees are of the cedar type, growing to
enormous size, frequently exceeding 16 feet in circumference. The
cocobolo is a hard wood, but without the beauty to fit it for cabinet
work. The sangre derives its name from its red sap which exudes from a
gash like blood. It takes a high polish, and is in its general
characteristics not unlike our cherry.
For the casual tourist the lumber district most easy of access is that
along the Bayano River reached by a motor boat or steam launch in a few
hours from Panama. The trip is frequently made by pleasure seekers, for
perhaps nowhere in the world is the beauty of a phosphorescent sea at
night so marvelously shown, and few places easily found by man show such
a horde of alligators or crocodiles, as are seen in Crocodile Creek, one
of the affluents of the Bayano. This river, which empties into the Gulf
of Panama, is in its lower reaches a tide-water stream and perhaps
because of the mingling of the salt and the fresh the water is densely
filled with the microscopic infusoria which at night blaze forth in
coldly phosphorescent gleams suggestive of the sparkling of a spray of
diamonds. Put your hand into the stream, lift it and let the water
trickle through your fingers. Every drop gleams and glistens as it falls
with a radiance comparable with nothing in nature unless it be the great
fire-flies of the tropics. Even diamonds have to pass through the hands
of the cutter before they will blaze with any such effulgence as the
trickling waters of this tropical stream. One who has passed a night
upon it may well feel that he has lived with one of the world’s marvels,
and can but wonder at the matter-of-fact manner in which the natives go
about their tasks unmoved by the contact with so much shining glory.
[Illustration: LOADING CATTLE AT AGUADULCE]
There is always controversy on the Isthmus over the question whether the
gigantic saurians of Crocodile Creek are in fact crocodiles or
alligators. Whether expert scientific opinion has ever been called upon
to settle the problem I do not know, but I rather suspect that crocodile
was determined upon because it gave to the name of Crocodile Creek in
which they are so plentifully found “apt alliteration’s artful aid” to
make it picturesque. Whatever the precise zoological classification
given to the huge lizards may be is likely to be relatively unimportant
before long, because the greatest joy of every tourist is found in
killing them. The fascination which slaughter possesses for men is
always hard to understand, but just what gives the killing of alligators
its peculiar zest I could never understand. The beasts are slow, torpid
and do not afford a peculiarly difficult test of marksmanship, even
though the vulnerable part of their bodies is small. They are timid and
will not fight for their lives. There is nothing of the sporting
proposition in pursuing them that is to be found in hunting the tiger or
the grizzly. They are practically harmless, and in the Bayano region
wholly so, as there are no domestic animals upon which they can prey. It
is true their teeth and skins have a certain value in the market, but it
is not for these the tourist kills them. Most of those slain for “sport”
sink instantly and cannot be recovered.
[Illustration: DOLEGA IN THE CHIRIQUI PROVINCE]
However if you visit Crocodile Creek with a typical party you will be
given a very fair imitation of a lively skirmish in actual war. From
every part of the deck, from the roof of the cabin, and from the pilot
house shots ring out from repeating rifles in a fierce desire to kill.
The Emersonian doctrine of compensation is often given illustration by
the killing of one of the hunters in the eagerness to get at the quarry.
In fact that is one of the commonest accidents of the tourist season in
Panama.
[Illustration: MAHOGANY TREES WITH ORCHIDS]
Crocodile Creek is a deep, sluggish black stream, almost arched over by
the boughs of the thick forest along the shores. Here and there the
jungle is broken by a broad shelving beach on which the ungainly beasts
love to sun themselves, and to which the females resort to deposit their
eggs. At the sound of a voice or a paddle in the stream the awkward
brutes take to the water in terror, for there are few animals more
timid than they. When in the water the crocodile floats lazily,
displaying only three small bumps above the surface--the nostrils and
the horny protruberances above the eyes. Once the pool in which they
float is disturbed they sink to the bottom and lurk there for hours.
Alligator hunting for business purposes is not as yet generally pursued
on the Isthmus, though one hunter and trapper is said to have secured as
many as 60,000 in a year. But as the demand for the skins, and to a
lesser degree for the teeth, of the animals is a constant one, it is
probable that with the aid of the tourists they will be exterminated
there as thoroughly as they have been in the settled parts of Florida.
While on the subject of slaughter and the extermination of game it may
be noted that the Canal Commission has already established very
stringent game laws on the Zone, particularly for the protection of
plumed birds like the egret, and it is seriously proposed to make of
that part of Gatun Lake within the Zone a refuge for birds in which no
shooting shall be permitted. Such action would stop mere wanton
slaughter from the decks of passing steamers, and in the end would
greatly enhance the beauty and interest of the trip through the lake
which would be fairly alive with birds and other animal life.
[Illustration: BAYANO CEDAR, EIGHT FEET DIAMETER]
[Illustration: THE CACAO TREE]
[Illustration: STREET IN DAVID]
The Bayano River region beside being the center of such lumbering
activities as the Zone knows at present is the section in which are
found the curious vegetable ivory nuts which, though growing wild, have
become one of the principal products of Panama. Only a few years ago
they were looked upon merely as curiosities but are now a useful new
material. They are gathered by the natives and sold to dealers in
Panama who ship them north to be made into buttons and other articles
of general use. Nobody has yet experimented with the cultivation of the
tree, and there is reason to believe that with cultivation larger nuts
could be obtained, and, by planting, considerable groves established.
The trees grow well in every part of the Darien, and the demand, with
the rapid diminution in the supply of real ivory, should be a growing
one.
Indeed, the more one studies Panama and its resources the more one is
convinced that all that is necessary to make the country a rich and
prosperous one, or at any rate to cause it to create riches and
prosperity for investors, is the application of capital, labor and
systematic management to the resources it already possesses. In its 400
years of Spanish and mestizo control these three factors have been
continuously lacking. There are men in Panama, of native birth and of
Spanish origin, who have undertaken to develop certain of the land’s
resources and have moderately enriched themselves. But the most striking
evidence of the success to be obtained from attacking the industrial
problem in Panama systematically and in a big way is that furnished by
the operations of the United Fruit Company, the biggest business fact in
the tropics.
Panama is, of course, only one link in the colossal chain of the
operations of this company in the tropics. The rapidly increasing
prosperity of many of the Central Republics is due largely to the
sweeping scope of the United Fruit Company, and its impress is in
evidence all along the north coast of South America and throughout the
West Indies. Its interests in Jamaica are enormous. Cuba put Jamaica off
the sugar map, but the United Fruit Company came to her rescue with an
offer to purchase all the bananas her planters could furnish, and
Jamaica now leads the American tropics with 17,000,000 bunches annually,
of which the United Fruit Company obtains nearly half, the balance being
handled by its competitors. The company also owns the famous Titchfield
Hotel of Port Antonio, and operates the Myrtle Bank Hotel of Kingston.
In Cuba the company owns 60,000 acres of sugar plantations and its two
great sugar mills will this year add to the world’s product an amount
with a market value in excess of $10,000,000. Its scores of white
steamships, amazingly well contrived and fitted for tropical service,
constitute one of the pleasantest features of travel on these sunlit
seas.
[Illustration: IN THE BANANA COUNTRY]
[Illustration: MARKET PLACE AT ANCON]
[Illustration: FRUIT COMPANY STEAMER AT WHARF]
The United Fruit Company is by far the greatest agricultural enterprise
the world has ever known. Its fruit plantations constitute a farm half a
mile wide and more than seven hundred miles long. All of its farm lands
exceed in area the 1332 square miles which constitute the sovereign
State of Rhode Island. On these farms are more than 25,000 head of live
stock. This agricultural empire is traversed by nearly 1000 miles of
railroad. To carry the fruits from the plantations to the seaports there
are employed 100 locomotives and 3000 freight cars. An army of nearly
40,000 men is employed in this new and mammoth industry. The republics
of Central America were inland nations before the United Fruit Company
made gardens of the low Caribbean coast lands and created from the
virgin wilderness such ports as Barrios, Cortez, Limon and Bocas del
Toro.
[Illustration: UNITED FRUIT COMPANY TRAIN
This narrow gauge railroad carries no freight except bananas. Nearly
1000 miles of such road are maintained]
[Illustration: SANITARY OFFICE, BOCAS DEL TORO]
This Yankee enterprise has erected and maintains at its own expense many
of the lighthouses which serve its own great fleet and the ships of all
the world. It has dredged new channels and marked them with buoys. It
has installed along the Central and South American coasts a wireless
telegraph service of the highest power and efficiency. It has
constructed hundreds of miles of public roads, maintains public schools,
and in other ways renders at its own expense the services which are
presumed to fall on governments. The American financiers associated with
it are now pushing to completion the Pan-American railroad which soon
will connect New York with Panama by an all-rail route, and thus realize
what once was esteemed an impractical dream.
But it is the United Fruit Company’s activities in Panama only that are
pertinent to this book. They demonstrate strikingly how readily one
natural opportunity afforded by this land responded to the call of
systematic effort, and there are a dozen products beside the banana
which might thus be exploited.
[Illustration: A PILE OF REJECTED BANANAS
The fruit is thrown out by the company’s inspectors for scarcely visible
flaws]
On the Atlantic coast, only a night’s sail from Colon, is the port of
Bocas del Toro (The Mouths of the Bull), a town of about 9000
inhabitants, built and largely maintained by the banana trade. Here is
the largest and most beautiful natural harbor in the American tropics,
and here some day will be established a winter resort to which will
flock people from all parts of the world. Almirante Bay and the Chiriqui
Lagoon extend thirty or forty miles, dotted with thousands of islands
decked with tropical verdure, and flanked to the north and west by
superb mountain ranges with peaks of from seven to ten thousand feet in
height.
[Illustration: A PERFECT BUNCH OF BANANAS]
The towns of Bocas del Toro and Almirante are maintained almost entirely
by the banana trade. Other companies than the United Fruit raise and buy
bananas here, but it was the initiative of the leading company which by
systematic work put the prosperity of this section on a firm basis.
Lands that a few years ago were miasmatic swamps are now improved and
planted with bananas. Over 4,000,000 bunches were exported from this
plantation in 1911, and 35,000 acres are under cultivation there. A
narrow gauge railway carries bananas exclusively. The great white
steamships sail almost daily carrying away little except bananas. The
money spent over the counters of the stores in Bocas del Toro comes from
natives who have no way of getting money except by raising bananas and
selling them, mostly to the United Fruit Company. It has its
competitors, but it invented the business and has brought it to its
highest development. At this Panama town, and for that matter in the
other territories it controls, the company has established and enforces
the sanitary reforms which Col. Gorgas applied so effectively in Colon
and Panama. Its officials proudly claim that they were the pioneers in
inventing and applying the methods which have conquered tropical
diseases. At Bocas del Toro the company maintains a hospital which lacks
nothing of the equipment of the Ancon Hospital, though of course not so
large. It has successfully adopted the commissary system established on
the Canal Zone. Labor has always been the troublesome factor in
industrial enterprises in Central America. The Fruit Company has joined
with the Isthmian Commission in the systematic endeavor to keep labor
contented and therefore efficient.
[Illustration: THE ASTOR YACHT AT CRISTOBAL]
Probably it will be the policy which any corporation attempting to do
work on a large scale will be compelled to adopt.
To my mind the United Fruit Company, next to the Panama Canal, is the
great phenomenon of the Caribbean world today. Some day some one with
knowledge will write a book about it as men have written the history of
the British East India Company, or the Worshipful Company of Hudson Bay
Adventurers, for this distinctly American enterprise has accomplished a
creative work so wonderful and so romantic as to entitle it to equal
literary consideration. Its coöperation with the Republic of Panama and
the manner in which it has followed the plans formulated by the Isthmian
Commission entitles it to attention in a book treating of Panama.
[Illustration: THE BAY OF BOCAS
This harbor of the chief banana port of Panama would accommodate a navy]
The banana business is the great trade of the tropics, and one that
cannot be reduced in volume by new competition, as cane sugar was
checked by beet sugar. But it is a business which requires special
machinery of distribution for its success. From the day the banana is
picked until it is in the stomach of the ultimate consumer the time
should not exceed three weeks. The fruit must be picked green, as, if
allowed to ripen on the trees, it splits open and the tropical insects
infect it. This same condition, by the way, affects all tropical fruits.
All must be gathered while still unripe. The nearest wholesale market
for bananas is New Orleans, five days’ steaming. New York is seven days
away. That means that once landed the fruit must be distributed to
commission houses and agents all over the United States with the utmost
expedition lest it spoil in transit. There can be no holding it in
storage, cold or otherwise, for a stronger demand or a higher market.
This means that the corporation must deal with agents who can be relied
upon to absorb the cargoes of the ships as regularly as they arrive.
From its budding near the Panama Canal to its finish in the alimentary
canal of its final purchaser the banana has to be handled systematically
and swiftly.
[Illustration: BRINGING HOME THE CROCODILE]
[Illustration: A MORNING’S SHOOTING]
To establish this machinery the United Fruit Company has invested more
than $190,000,000 in the tropics--doubtless the greatest investment next
to the Panama Canal made in that Zone. How much of this is properly a
Panama investment can hardly be told, since for example the Fruit
Company’s ships which ply to Colon and Bocas del Toro call at other
banana ports as well. These ships are peculiarly attractive in design
and in their clothing of snowy white, and I do not think there is any
American who, seeing them in Caribbean ports, does not wonder at the
sight of the British flag flying at the stern. His astonishment is not
allayed when he learns that the company has in all more than 100 ships
of various sizes, and nearly all of British registry. The transfer of
that fleet alone to American registry would be a notable and most
desirable step.
[Illustration: ON CROCODILE CREEK
Each spot looking like a leaf on the water is the nose of a submerged
saurian]
From officials of the company I learned that they would welcome the
opportunity to transfer their ships to American registry, except for
certain requirements of the navigation laws which make such a change
hazardous. Practically all the ownership of the ships is vested in
Americans, but to fly the British flag is for them a business necessity.
Chief among the objections is the clause which would give the United
States authority to seize the vessels in time of war. It is quite
evident that this power might be employed to the complete destruction of
the Fruit Company’s trade; in fact to its practical extinction as a
business concern. A like power existing in England or Germany would not
be of equal menace to any single company flying the flag of that nation,
for there the government’s needs could be fully supplied by a proper
apportionment of requisitions for ships among the many companies. But
with the exceedingly restricted merchant marine of the United States the
danger of the enforcement of this right would be an ever-present menace.
It is for this reason that the Fruit Company steamers fly the British
flag, and the American in Colon may see, as I did one day, nine great
ocean ships in the port with only one flying the stars and stripes. The
opening of the canal will not wholly remedy this.
[Illustration: _Photo by Carl Hayden_
THE END OF THE CROCODILE]
In all respects save the registry of its ships, however, the Fruit
Company is a thoroughly American concern and to its operations in the
Caribbean is due much of the good feeling toward the United States which
is observable there. In 1912 it carried 1,113,741 tons of freight, of
which 359,686 was general freight, carried for the public in addition
to company freight. This is a notable public service, profitable no
doubt but vital to the interests of the American tropics. It owns or
holds under leases 852,650 acres, and in 1912 carried to the United
States about 25,000,000 bunches of bananas, and 16,000,000 bunches to
Great Britain and the Continent. Viewed from the standpoint of the
consumer its work certainly has operated to cheapen bananas and to place
them on sale at points where they were never before seen. The banana has
not participated in the high cost of living nor has one company
monopolized the market, for the trade statistics show 17,000,000 bunches
of bananas imported by rival companies in 1912. As for its stimulation
of the business of the ports of New Orleans, Galveston and Mobile, and
its revivifying of trade along the Caribbean, both are matters of common
knowledge.
[Illustration: ABOVE THE CLOUDS, CHIRIQUI VOLCANO]
The banana thrives best in rich soil covered with alluvial deposits and
in a climate of great humidity where the temperature never falls below
75 degrees Fahrenheit. Once established the plantation needs little
attention, the plant being self-propagating from suckers which shoot off
from the “mat,” the tangled roots of the mother plant. It begins to bear
fruit at the age of ten or eleven months, and with the maturing of one
bunch of fruit the parent plant is at once cut down so that the strength
of the soil may go into the suckers that succeed it. Perhaps the most
technical work of the cultivator is to select the suckers so that the
plantation will not bring all its fruit to maturity in one season, but
rather yield a regular succession of crops, month after month. It was
interesting to learn from a representative of the United Fruit Company
at Bocas del Toro, that the banana has its dull season--not in
production but in the demand for it which falls off heavily in winter,
though one would suppose that summer, when our own fruits are in the
market, would be the period of its eclipse.
[Illustration: THE CHIRIQUI VOLCANO]
[Illustration: NATIVE MARKET BOAT AT CHORRERA]
While most of the fruit gathered in the neighborhood of Bocas del Toro
is grown on land owned and tilled by the Company, there are hundreds of
small individual growers with plantations of from half an acre to fifty
acres or even more. All fruit is delivered along the railway lines, and
the larger growers have tramways, the cars drawn by oxen or mules, to
carry their fruit to the stipulated point. Notice is given the growers
of the date on which the fruit will be called for, and within twelve to
eighteen hours after it has been cut it is in the hold of the vessel. It
is subjected to a rigid inspection at the docks, and the flaws for which
whole bunches are rejected would often be quite undiscernible to the
ordinary observer.
[Illustration: IN BOUQUETTE VALLEY, THE MOST FERTILE PART OF CHIRIQUI]
The banana is one of the few fruits which are free from insect pests,
being protected by its thick, bitter skin. If allowed to ripen in the
open, however, it speedily falls a prey to a multitude of egg-laying
insects. The tree itself is not so immune. Lately a small rodent,
something like the gopher of our American states, has discovered that
banana roots are good to eat. From time immemorial he lived in the
jungle, burrowing and nibbling the roots of the plants there, but in an
unlucky moment for the fruit companies he discovered that tunneling in
soil that had been worked was easier and the roots of the cultivated
banana more succulent than his normal diet. Therefore a large
importation of scientists from Europe and the United States to find some
way of eradicating the industrious pest that has attacked the chief
industry of the tropics at the root, so to speak.
[Illustration: COFFEE PLANT AT BOUQUETTE]
Baron Humboldt is said to have first called the attention of civilized
people to the food value of the banana, but it was one of the founders
of the United Fruit Company, a New England sea captain trading to Colon,
who first introduced it to the general market in the United States. For
a time he carried home a few bunches in the cabin of his schooner for
his family and friends, but, finding a certain demand for the fruit,
later began to import it systematically. From this casual start the
United Fruit Company and its hustling competitors have grown. The whole
business is the development of a few decades and people still young can
remember when bananas were sold, each wrapped in tissue paper, for five
or ten cents, while today ten or fifteen cents a dozen is a fair price.
The fruit can be prepared in a multitude of fashions, particularly the
coarser varieties of plantains, and the Fruit Company has compiled a
banana cook book but has taken little pains to circulate it, the demand
for the fruit being at times still in excess of the supply. There seems
every indication that the demand is constant and new banana territory is
being steadily developed.
[Illustration: DRYING THE COFFEE BEANS]
Several companies share with the United Fruit Company the Panama market.
The methods of gathering and marketing the crop employed by all are
practically the same, but the United Fruit Company is used as an
illustration here because its business is the largest and because it has
so closely followed the Isthmian Canal Commission in its welfare work.
The banana country lies close to the ocean and mainly on the Atlantic
side of the Isthmus. The lumber industry nestles close to the rivers,
mainly in the Bayano region. Cocoanuts need the beaches and the sea
breezes. Native rubber is found in every part of the Republic, though at
present it is collected mainly in the Darien, which is true also of
vegetable ivory. The only gold which is mined on a large scale is taken
from the neighborhood of the Tuyra River in the Darien. But for products
requiring cultivation like cacao and coffee the high lands in the
Chiriqui province offer the best opportunity.
[Illustration: DRYING CLOTHS FOR COFFEE
Where the planter has no regular drying floor, cloths are spread on
which the berries are exposed]
David is really the center of this territory. It is a typical Central
American town of about 15,000 people, with a plaza, a cathedral, a hotel
and all the appurtenances of metropolitan life in Panama. The place is
attractive in its way, with its streets of white-walled, red-tiled
dwellings, with blue or green doors and shutters. It seems to have grown
with some steadiness, for though the Panama census for 1912 gave it
15,000 inhabitants, travelers like Mr. Forbes Lindsay and Albert
Edwards, who visited it only a year or two earlier, gave it only from
5000 to 8000 people. Its growth, however, is natural and healthy, for
the country round it is developing rapidly. You reach David now by boats
of the Pacific Mail and the National Navigation Company from Panama. The
quickest trip takes thirty hours. When the government railroad is built,
about which there is some slight doubt, the whole country will be opened
and should be quickly settled. The road in all probability will be
continued to Bocas del Toro on the Atlantic coast.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
BREADFRUIT TREE]
While the cattle business of the Chiriqui region is its chief mainstay,
it is far from being developed to its natural extent. The Commissary
officials of the Canal organization tried to interest cattle growers to
the extent of raising enough beef for the need of the Canal workers, but
failed. Practically all of the meat thus used is furnished by the
so-called “Beef Trust” of the United States. It is believed that there
are not more than 50,000 head of cattle all told in Panama. I was told
on the Isthmus that agents of a large Chicago firm had traveled through
Chiriqui with a view to establishing a packing house there, but
reported that the supply of cattle was inadequate for even the smallest
establishment. Yet the country is admirably adapted for cattle raising.
[Illustration: PRIMITIVE SUGAR MILL]
The climate of this region is equable, both as to temperature and
humidity. Epidemic diseases are practically unknown among either men or
beasts. Should irrigation in future seem needful to agriculture the
multitude of streams furnish an ample water supply and innumerable sites
for reservoirs.
Westward from David the face of the country rises gently until you come
to the Caldera Valley which lies at the foot of the Chiriqui Peak, an
extinct volcano perhaps 8000 feet high. Nowhere in Panama do the
mountains rise very high, though the range is clearly a connection of
the Cordilleras of North and South America. The Chiriqui Peak has not in
the memory of man been in eruption, but the traces of its volcanic
character are unmistakable. Its crater is a circular plain about half a
mile in diameter surrounded by a densely wooded precipitous ridge. As
the ascent is continued the woods give way to grass and rocks. While
there is a distinct timber line, no snow line is attained. At the foot
of the mountain is El Bouquette, much esteemed by the Panamanians as a
health resort. Thither go Canal workers who, not being permitted to
remain on the Zone during their vacations, wish to avoid the long voyage
to North American ports.
[Illustration: CHIRIQUI NATIVES IN AN OX-CART]
This neighborhood is the center of the coffee-growing industry which
should be profitable in Panama if a heavy protective tariff could make
it so. But not even enough of the fragrant berries are grown to supply
home needs, and the industry is as yet largely prosecuted in an
unsystematic and haphazard manner. It is claimed that sample shipments
of coffee brought high prices in New York, but as yet not enough is
grown to permit exportation. Cacao, which thrives, is grown chiefly by
English and German planters, but as yet in a small way only. Cotton,
tobacco and fiber plants also grow readily in this region but are little
cultivated.
[Illustration: PROCLAIMING A LAW AT DAVID
There being a dearth of newspapers and readers, new laws are promulgated
by being read aloud]
A curious industry of the Chiriqui country, now nearly abandoned, was
the collection of gold ornaments which the Guaymi Indians formerly
buried with their dead. These images sometimes in human form, more often
in that of a fish, sometimes like frogs and alligators, jointed and
flexible, were at one time found in great quantities and formed a
conspicuous feature of the Panama curiosity shops. In seeking these the
hunters walked back and forth over the grounds known to be Indian burial
places, tapping the ground with rods. When the earth gave forth a hollow
sound the spade was resorted to, and usually a grave was uncovered. Jars
which had contained wine and food were usually found in the graves,
which were in fact subterranean tombs carefully built with flat stones.
The diggers tell of finding skulls perfectly preserved apparently but
which crumbled to pieces at a touch. Evidently the burial places which
can be identified through local tradition have been nearly exhausted,
for the ancient trinkets cannot longer be readily found in the Panama
shops.
[Illustration: THE CATTLE RANGE NEAR DAVID
In Chiriqui province there is much of this open savanna or prairie land
bordered by thick jungle]
Another Panamanian product which the tourists buy eagerly but which is
rapidly becoming rare is the pearl. In the Gulf of Panama are a group of
islands which have been known as Las Islas des Perlas--the Pearl
Islands. This archipelago is about thirty miles long, with sixteen big
islands and a quantity of small ones, and lies about sixty miles south
of Panama City. Balboa saw them from the shore and intended to visit
them but never did. Pizarro stopped there on his way to Peru and
plundered them to his heart’s content. Otherwise their history has been
uneventful. Saboga on the island of the same name is a beautiful little
tropical village of about 300 huts, on a high bluff bordering a bay
that affords excellent anchorage. Whales are plentiful in these waters
and Pacific whalers are often seen in port. San Miguel, the largest town
of the archipelago, is on Rey Island and has about 1000 inhabitants. The
tower of its old church is thickly inlaid with glistening, pearly shell.
[Illustration: DESPOILING OLD GUAYMI GRAVES]
The pearl fisheries have been overworked for years, perhaps centuries,
and begin to show signs of being exhausted. Nevertheless the tourist who
takes the trip to the islands from the City of Panama will find himself
beset by children as he lands offering seed pearls in quantities.
Occasionally real bargains may be had from “beach combers” not only at
Rey Island, but even at Taboga, where I knew an American visitor to pick
up for eleven dollars three pearls valued at ten or twelve times as much
when shown in the United States. There are stories of lucky finds among
divers that vie with the tales of nuggets among gold prospectors. Once a
native boy diving for sport in one of the channels near Naos Island
brought up an oyster in which was a black pearl that was sold in Panama
for $3000. The report does not say how much of this the boy got, but as
the pearl was afterward sold in Paris for $12,000 it is quite evident
that the share of the middleman, of whom political economists just now
talk so much, was heavy. The Panama pearls are sometimes of beautiful
colors, green, pale blue and a delicate pink. On the Chiriqui coast a
year or two ago a pearl weighing about forty-two carats, about the size
and shape of a partridge egg, greenish black at the base and shading to
a steel gray at the tip, was found. It was sold in Paris for $5000.
[Illustration: A DAY’S SHOOTING, GAME MOSTLY MONKEYS]
It is a curious fact that the use of mussels from our western rivers is
one cause for the decadence of the Panama pearl industry. For years the
actual expense of maintaining these fisheries was met by the sale of the
shell for use in making buttons and mother-of-pearl ornaments. The
pearls represented the profit of the enterprise, which was always
therefore more or less of a gamble--but a game in which it was
impossible to lose, though the winnings might be great or small
according to luck. Now that the demand for pearl oyster shells has
fallen off, owing to the competition of mussels, the chances in the game
are rather against the player and the sport languishes.
[Illustration: THE GOVERNMENT SCHOOL OF HAT MAKING]
[Illustration: BEGINNING A PANAMA HAT]
The authorities of the Republic are making some effort to establish a
system of industrial schools which may lead to the fuller utilization of
the natural resources of the country. Every tourist who visits the
Isthmus is immediately taught by one who has been there a day or two
longer than he that Panama hats are not made in Panama. This seems to
be the most precious information that anyone on the Zone has to impart.
Most of the hats there sold are indeed made in Ecuador and the name
“Panama” was first attached to them years ago, because their chief
market was found in Panama City, whence they were distributed to more
northern countries. The palm of which they are made however grows
generally in Panama and the government has established in the Chiriqui
province a school in which native boys are taught the art of hat making.
In the National Institute at Panama City there is also a government
trades school where boys are given a three years’ course in the elements
of the carpenters’ and machinists’ trades. Indeed the rulers of the
Republic, which was so abruptly created, deserve great credit for the
steps they are taking for the creation of a general system of public
education, both literary and practical. The school system is not yet on
a par with that of states of longer existence, nor will it in all
probability ever quite conform to more northern ideas of an educational
establishment. For example, the National Institute is closed to girls,
who for their higher education are limited to the schools maintained by
the church. A normal school, however, in which girls are prepared for
teaching in the primary grades is maintained with about 125 students.
The school system of Panama must be regarded merely as a nucleus from
which a larger organism may grow. Yet when one recalls the state of
society which has resulted from revolutions in other Central American
states, one is impelled to a certain admiration for the promptitude with
which the men who erected the Republic of Panama gave thought to the
educational needs of people. They were suddenly put in authority over an
infant state which had no debt, but, on the contrary, possessed a
capital of $10,000,000 equivalent to about $30 for every man, woman and
child of its population. Instead of creating an army, buying a navy and
thus wasting the money on mere militarism which appeals so strongly to
the Latin-American mind, they organized a civil government, equipped it
with the necessary buildings, established a university and laid the
foundation of a national system of education.
[Illustration: COFFEE PLANTATION AT BOUQUETTE]
The thoughtful traveler will concede to the Republic of Panama great
natural resources and a most happy entrance to the family of nations. It
is the especial protégé of the United States and under the watchful care
of its patron will be free from the apprehension of misuse, revolution
or invasion from without which has kept other Central American
governments in a constant state of unrest. About the international
morality of the proceedings which created the relations now existing
between the United States and Panama perhaps the least said the better.
But even if we reprobate the sale of Joseph by his brethren, in the
scripture story, we must at least admit that he did better in Egypt than
in his father’s house and that the protection and favor of the mighty
Pharaoh was of the highest advantage to him, and in time to his
unnatural brethren as well.
[Illustration: WORK OF INDIAN STUDENTS IN THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE]
At present the Republic suffers not only from its own checkered past,
but from the varied failings of its neighbors. Its monetary system
affords one illustration. The highest coin of the land is the peso, a
piece the size of our silver dollar but circulating at a value of fifty
cents. If a man should want to pay a debt of $500 he would have to
deliver 1000 pesos unless he was possessed of a bank account and could
settle by check. No paper money is issued. “Who would take paper money
issued by a Central American republic?” ask the knowing ones scornfully
when you inquire about this seeming lack in the monetary system. Yet the
Republic of Panama is the most solvent of nations, having no national
debt and with money in bank.
[Illustration: THE CRATER OF THE CHIRIQUI VOLCANO]
Probably the one obstacle to the progress of the Republic to greatness
is the one common to all tropical countries on which Benjamin Kidd laid
an unerring finger when he referred to the unwisdom of longer permitting
the riches of the tropics to “remain undeveloped with resources running
to waste under the management of races of low social efficiency”. The
Panamanian authorities are making apparently sincere endeavors to
attract new settlers of greater efficiency. In proportion to the success
that attends the efforts the future of Panama will be bright.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT
VENDOR OF FRUIT AND POTTERY
Like all tropical towns Panama displays interesting bits of outdoor life
in its street markets and vendors. The sidewalks are the true shops and
almost the homes of the people.]
CHAPTER XVI
THE INDIANS OF PANAMA
While that portion of the Panama territory that lies along the border of
Colombia known as the Darien is rather ill-defined as to area and to
boundaries, it is known to be rich in timber and is believed to possess
gold mines of great richness. But it is practically impenetrable by the
white man. Through this country Balboa led his force on his expedition
to the unknown Pacific, and was followed by the bloodthirsty Pedrarias
who bred up in the Indians a hatred of the white man that has grown as
the ages passed. No expedition can enter this region even today except
as an armed force ready to fight for the right of passage. In 1786 the
Spaniards sought to subdue the territory, built forts on both the
Atlantic and Pacific coasts and established a line of trading posts
connecting them. But the effort failed. The posts were abandoned. Today
the white man who tries to enter the Darien does so at the risk of his
life.
In 1854 a navy exploring expedition of twenty-seven men, under command
of Lieutenant Isaac C. Strain, entered the jungle of the Darien at
Caledonia Bay, on the Atlantic side, the site of Patterson’s ill-fated
colony. They purposed crossing the Isthmus and making a survey for a
canal route, as an English adventurer not long before had
asserted--falsely as it proved--that he had discovered a route by which
a canal could be built with but three or four miles of cutting. The
party carried ten days’ provisions and forty rounds of ball cartridge
per man. They expected to have to traverse about forty or fifty miles,
for which the supply of provisions seemed wholly adequate. But when
they had cut their way through the jungle, waded through swamps and
climbed hills until their muscles were exhausted and their clothing torn
to tatters, they found themselves lost in the very interior of the
Isthmus with all their food gone. Diaries kept by members of the party
show that they lived in constant terror of the Indians. But no attack
was made upon them. The inhabitants contented themselves with
disappearing before the white men’s advance, sweeping their huts and
fields clear of any sort of food. The jungle not its people fought the
invaders. For food they had mainly nuts with a few birds and the diet
disturbed their stomachs, caused sores and loosened their teeth. The
bite of a certain insect deposited under the skin a kind of larva, or
worm, which grew to the length of an inch and caused the most frightful
torments. Despairing of getting his full party out alive, after they had
been twenty-three days fighting with the jungle, Strain took three men
and pushed ahead to secure and send back relief. It was thirty-nine days
before the men left behind saw him again.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
TRAPPING AN ABORIGINE
In houses and clothing the Darien Indians are decidedly primitive]
[Illustration: NATIVE VILLAGE ON PANAMA BAY]
Death came fast to those in the jungle. The agonies they suffered from
starvation, exposure and insect pests baffle description. “Truxton in
casting his eyes on the ground saw a toad”, wrote the historian.
“Instantly snatching it up, he bit off the head and, spitting it away,
devoured the body. Maury looked at him a moment, and then picked up the
rejected head, saying, ‘Well, Truxton, you are getting quite particular.
Something of an epicure, eh’? With these words he quietly devoured the
head himself.”
Nine of the twenty-seven men who entered the Darien with Strain died.
When the leader returned with the relief party they were found, like
Greely at Camp Starvation, unable to move and slowly dying. Those who
retained life never fully regained strength. Every condition which
brought such frightful disaster upon the Strain party exists in the
Darien today. The Indians are as hostile, the trails as faintly
outlined, the jungle as dense, the insects as savage. Only along the
banks of the rivers has civilization made some little headway, but the
richest gold field twenty miles back in the interior is as safe from
civilized workings as though it were walled in with steel and guarded by
dragons. Every speculative man you meet in Panama will assure you that
the gold is there but all agree that conditions must be radically
changed before it can be gotten out unless a regiment and a subsistence
train shall follow the miners.
[Illustration: A RIVER LANDING PLACE]
The authorities of Panama estimate that there are about 36,000 tribal
Indians, that is to say aborigines, still holding their tribal
organizations and acknowledging fealty to no other government now in the
Isthmus. The estimate is of course largely guesswork, for few of the
wild Indians leave the jungle and fewer still of the census enumerators
enter it. Most of these Indians live in the mountains of the provinces
of Bocas del Toro, Chiriqui and Veragua, or in the Darien. Their tribes
are many and the sources of information concerning them but few. The
most accessible and complete record of the various tribes is in a
pamphlet issued by the Smithsonian Institution, and now obtainable only
through public libraries, as the edition for distribution has been
exhausted. The author, Miss Eleanor Yorke Bell, beside studies made at
first hand has diligently examined the authorities on the subject and
has presented the only considerable treatise on the subject of which I
have knowledge.
[Illustration: THE FALLS AT CHORRERA]
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood, & Underwood_
ON THE RIO GRANDE]
Of life among the more civilized natives she says:
“The natives of the Isthmus in general, even in the larger towns, live
together without any marriage ceremony, separating at will and dividing
the children. As there is little or no personal property, this is
accomplished amicably as a rule, though should disputes arise the
alcalde of the district is appealed to, who settles the matter. This
informal system is always stoutly defended by the women, even more than
by the men, for, as among all people low in the scale of civilization,
it is generally held that the women receive better treatment when not
bound and therefore free to depart at any time. Recently an effort has
been made to bring more of the inhabitants under the marriage laws, with
rather amusing results in many instances. The majority of the population
is nominally Catholic, but the teachings of the church are only vaguely
understood, and its practices consist in the adoration of a few battered
images of saints whose particular degree of sanctity is not even guessed
at and who, when their owners are displeased with them, receive rather
harsh treatment, as these people have usually no real idea of
Christianity beyond a few distorted and superstitious beliefs. After the
widespread surveys of the French engineers, a sincere effort was made to
re-Christianize the inhabitants of the towns in Darien as well as
elsewhere, for, until this time, nothing had been done toward their
spiritual welfare since the days of the early Jesuits. In the last
thirty years spasmodic efforts have been made to reach the people with
little result, and, excepting at Penonome, David, and Santiago, there
are few churches where services are held outside of Panama and the towns
along the railroad.
[Illustration: OLD SPANISH CHURCH, CHORRERA]
“The chief amusements of the Isthmian are gambling, cock-fighting, and
dancing, the latter assisted by the music of the tom-tom and by dried
beans rattled in a calabash. After feasts or burials, when much bad rum
and whisky is consumed, the hilarity keeps up all night and can be heard
for miles, increased by the incessant howls of the cur dogs lying under
every shack. Seldom does an opportunity come to the stranger to witness
the really characteristic dances, as the natives do not care to perform
before them, though a little money will sometimes work wonders.
Occasionally, their dancing is really remarkably interesting, when a
large amount of pantomime enters into it and they develop the story of
some primitive action, as, for instance, the drawing of the water,
cutting the wood, making the fire, cooking the food, etc., ending in a
burst of song symbolizing the joys of the new prepared feast. In an
extremely crude form it reminds one of the old opera ballets and seems
to be a composite of the original African and the ancient Spanish, which
is very probably the case.
[Illustration: THE CHURCH AT ANCON]
“The Orientals of the Isthmus deserve a word in passing. They are
chiefly Chinese coolies and form a large part of the small merchant
class. Others, in the hill districts, cultivate large truck gardens,
bringing their produce swinging over the shoulders on poles to the city
markets. Their houses and grounds are very attractive, built of reed or
bamboo in the eastern fashion and marked everywhere by extreme neatness,
contrasting so strikingly with the homes and surroundings of their negro
neighbors. Many cultivate fields of cane or rice as well, and amidst the
silvery greens, stretching for some distance, the quaint blue figures of
the workmen in their huge hats make a charming picture. Through the
rubber sections Chinese ‘middlemen’ are of late frequently found buying
that valuable commodity for their fellow countrymen in Panama City, who
are now doing quite a large business in rubber. These people live much
as in their native land, seldom learning more than a few words of
Spanish (except those living in the towns), and they form a very
substantial and good element of the population”.
[Illustration: THE PEARL ISLAND VILLAGE OF SABOGA]
To enumerate even by names the aboriginal tribes would be tedious and
unavailing. Among the more notable are the Doracho-Changuina, of
Chiriqui, light of color, believing that the Great Spirit lived in the
volcano of Chiriqui, and occasionally showing their displeasure with him
by shooting arrows at the mountain. The Guaymies, of whom perhaps 6000
are left, are the tribe that buried with their dead the curious golden
images that were once plentiful in the bazaars of Panama, but are now
hard to find. They have a pleasant practice of putting a calabash of
water and some plantains by a man they think dying and leaving him to
his fate, usually in some lonesome part of the jungle. The Cunas or
Caribs are the tribes inhabiting the Darien. All were, and some are,
believed still to be cannibals. Eleven lesser tribes are grouped under
this general name. As a rule they are small and muscular. Most of them
have abandoned their ancient gaudy dress, and so far as they are clothed
at all wear ordinary cotton clothing. Painting the face and body is
still practiced. The dead often are swung in hammocks from trees and
supplied with fresh provisions until the cords rot and the body falls to
the ground. Then the spirit’s journey to the promised land is held to be
ended and provisions are no longer needed. Sorcery and soothsaying are
much in vogue, and the sorcerers who correspond to the medicine men of
our North American Indians will sometimes shut themselves up in a small
hut shrieking, beating tom-toms and imitating the cries of wild animals.
When they emerge in a sort of self-hypnotized state they are held to be
peculiarly fit for prophesying.
[Illustration: NATIVE VILLAGE AT CAPERA]
All the Indians drink heavily, and the white man’s rum is to some extent
displacing the native drink of chica. This is manufactured by the women,
usually the old ones, who sit in a circle chewing yam roots or cassava
and expectorating the saliva into a large bowl in the center. This
ferments and is made the basis of a highly intoxicating drink. Curiously
enough the same drink is similarly made in far-away Samoa. The dutiful
wives after thus manufacturing the material upon which their spouses get
drunk complete their service by swinging their hammocks, sprinkling them
with cold water and fanning them as they lie in a stupor. Smoking is
another social custom, but the cigars are mere hollow rolls of tobacco
and the lighted end is held in the mouth. Among some of the tribes in
Comagre the bodies of the caciques, or chief men, were preserved after
death by surrounding them with a ring of fire built at a sufficient
distance to gradually dry the body until skin and bone alone remained.
The Indians with whom the visitor to Panama most frequently comes into
contact are those of the San Blas or Manzanillo country. These Indians
hover curiously about the bounds of civilization, and approach without
actually crossing them. They are fishermen and sailors, and many of
their young men ship on the vessels touching at Colon, and, after
visiting the chief seaports of the United States, and even of France and
England, are swallowed up again in their tribe without affecting its
customs to any appreciable degree. If in their wanderings they gain new
ideas or new desires they are not apparent. The man who silently offers
you fish, fruits or vegetables from his cayuca on the beach at Colon may
have trod the docks at Havre or Liverpool, the levee at New Orleans or
wandered along South Street in New York. Not a word of that can you coax
from him. Even in proffering his wares he does so with the fewest
possible words, and an air of lofty indifference. Uncas of the
Leather-Stocking Tales was no more silent and self-possessed a red-skin
than he.
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy National Geographic Magazine_
A CHOCO INDIAN IN FULL COSTUME
His cuffs are silver; his head adorned with flowers]
In physiognomy the San Blas Indians are heavy of feature and stocky of
frame. Their color is dark olive, with no trace of the negro apparent,
for it has been their unceasing study for centuries to retain their
racial purity. Their features are regular and pleasing and, among the
children particularly, a high order of beauty is often found. To get a
glimpse of their women is almost impossible, and a photograph of one is
practically unknown. If overtaken on the water, to which they often
resort in their cayucas, the women will wrap their clothing about their
faces, rather heedless of what other portions of their bodies may be
exposed, and make all speed for the shore. These women paint their faces
in glaring colors, wear nose rings, and always blacken their teeth on
being married. Among them more pains is taken with clothing than among
most of the savage Indians, many of their garments being made of a sort
of appliqué work in gaudy colors, with figures, often in representation
of the human form, cut out and inset in the garment.
So determined are the men of this tribe to maintain its blood
untarnished by any admixture whatsoever, that they long made it an
invariable rule to expel every white man from their territory at
nightfall. Of late years there has been a very slight relaxation of this
severity. Dr. Henri Pittier of the United States Department of
Agriculture, one of the best-equipped scientific explorers in the
tropics, several of whose photographs elucidate this volume, has lived
much among the San Blas and the Cuna-Cuna Indians and won their
friendship.
[Illustration: SOME SAN BLAS GIRLS
The dresses are covered with elaborate designs in appliqué work]
It was the ancestors of these Indians who made welcome Patterson and his
luckless Scotchmen, and in the 200 years that have elapsed they have
clung to the tradition of friendship for the Briton and hatred for the
Spaniard. Dr. Pittier reports having found that Queen Victoria occupied
in their villages the position of a patron saint, and that they refused
to believe his assertion that she was dead. His account of the attitude
of these Indians toward outsiders, recently printed in the National
Geographic Magazine, is an authoritative statement on the subject:
“The often circulated reports of the difficulty of penetrating into the
territory of the Cuna-Cuna are true only in part”, he says. “The
backwoods aborigines, in the valleys of the Bayano and Chucunaque
rivers, have nourished to this day their hatred for all strangers,
especially those of Spanish blood. That feeling is not a reasoned one:
it is the instinctive distrust of the savage for the unknown or
inexplicable, intensified in this particular case by the tradition of a
long series of wrongs at the hands of the hated Spaniards.
“So they feel that isolation is their best policy, and it would not be
safe for anybody to penetrate into their forests without a strong escort
and continual watchfulness. Many instances of murders, some confirmed
and others only suspected, are on record, and even the natives of the
San Blas coast are not a little afraid of their brothers of the
mountains.
“Of late, however, conditions seem to have bettered, owing to a more
frequent intercourse with the surrounding settlements. A negro of La
Palma, at the mouth of the Tuyra River, told me of his crossing, some
time ago, from the latter place to Chepo, through the Chucunaque and
Bayano territories, gathering rubber as he went along with his party. At
the headwaters of the Canaza River he and his companions were held up by
the ‘bravos’, who contented themselves with taking away the rubber and
part of the equipment and then let their prisoners go with the warning
not to come again.
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy of National Geographic Magazine_
CHIEF DON CARLOS OF THE CHOCOES AND HIS SON]
“The narrative of that expedition was supplemented by the reflection of
an old man among the hearers that twenty years ago none of the party
would have come out alive.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of National Geographic Magazine_
THE VILLAGE OF PLAYON GRAND, EIGHTY-FIVE MILES EAST OF THE CANAL
The houses are about 150 x 50 feet and each shelters 16 to 20 families.
The members of each family herd together in a single room]
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy Nat’l Geographic Magazine_
SAN BLAS WOMAN IN DAILY GARB]
“Among the San Blas Indians, who are at a far higher level of
civilization, the exclusion of aliens is the result of well-founded
political reasons. Their respected traditions are a long record of proud
independence; they have maintained the purity of their race and enjoyed
freely for hundreds of years every inch of their territory. They feel
that the day the negro or the white man acquires a foothold in their
midst these privileges will become a thing of the past. This is why,
without undue hostility to strangers, they discourage their incursions.
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy Nat’l Geographic Magazine_
A GIRL OF THE CHOCO TRIBE]
“Their means of persuasion are adjusted to the importance of the
intruder. They do not hesitate to shoot at any negro of the nearby
settlements poaching on their cocoanuts or other products; the trader or
any occasional visitor is very seldom allowed to stay ashore at night;
the adventurers who try to go prospecting into Indian territory are
invariably caught and shipped back to the next Panamanian port”.
Among the men of the San Blas tribe the land held by their people is
regarded as a sacred trust, bequeathed to them by their ancestors and to
be handed down by them to the remotest posterity. During the early days
of the Canal project it was desired to dig sand from a beach in the San
Blas country. A small United States man-of-war was sent thither to
broach the subject to the Indians, and the Captain held parley with the
chief. After hearing the plea and all the arguments and promises with
which it was strengthened the old Indian courteously refused the
privilege:
“He who made this land”, said he, “made it for Cuna-Cuna who live no
longer, for those who are here today and also for the ones to come. So
it is not ours only and we could not sell it”.
To this decision the tribe adhered, and the wishes of the aborigines
have been respected. It has been the policy of the United States to
avoid any possibility of giving offense to the native population of the
Isthmus, and even a request from the chief that the war vessel that
brought the negotiator on his fruitless errand should leave was acceded
to. It is quite unlikely, however, that the Indians will be able to
maintain their isolation much longer. Already there are signs of its
breaking down. While I was in Panama they sent a request that a
missionary, a woman it is true, who had been much among them, should
come and live with them permanently. They also expressed a desire that
she should bring her melodeon, thus giving new illustration to the
poetic adage, “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast”. Perhaps
the phonograph may in time prove the open sesame to many savage bosoms.
Among this people it is the women who cling most tenaciously to the
primitive customs, as might be expected, since they have been so
assiduously guarded against the wiles of the world. But Catholic
missionaries have made some headway in the country, and at Narganá
schools for girls have been opened under auspices of the church. It is
probably due to the feminine influence that the San Blas men return so
unfailingly to primitive customs after the voyages that have made them
familiar with civilization. If the women yield to the desire for novelty
the splendid isolation of the San Blas will not long endure. Perhaps
that would be unfortunate, for all other primitive peoples who have
surrendered to the wiles of the white men have suffered and disappeared.
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy National Geographic Magazine_
DAUGHTER OF CHIEF DON CARLOS
This young girl is merry, plump and fond of finger rings]
[Illustration: NATIVE BRIDGE OVER THE CALDERA RIVER]
In their present state the San Blas are relatively rich. All the land
belongs to all the people--that is why the old chief declined to sell
the sandy beach. There is a sort of private property in improvements. A
banana plantation, a cocoanut grove or an orange tree planted and cared
for, becomes a positive possession handed down to descendants of the
owner through the female line. Perhaps one reason for keeping the women
so shut off from the world is that they are the real owners of all
individual property. Ownership does not, however, attach to trees or
plants growing wild; they are as much communal as the land. So the
vegetable ivory, balata and cocoanuts which form the marketable products
are gathered by whomsoever may take the trouble. Land that has been
tilled belongs to the one who improved it. If he let it lapse into
wilderness it reverts to the community. The San Blas Indians have the
essence of the single tax theory without the tax.
They have a hazily defined religious system, and have curiously reversed
the position held by their priests or sorcerers. These influential
persons are not representatives of the spirit of good, but of the bad
spirit. Very logically the San Blas savages hold that any one may
represent the good spirit by being himself good, and that the
unsupported prayers of such a one are sure to be heard. But to reach the
devil, to induce that malicious practitioner of evil to rest from his
persecutions and to abandon the pursuit of the unfortunate, it is
desirable to have as intermediary some one who possesses his confidence
and high regard. Hence the strong position of the sorcerers in the
villages. The people defer to them on the principle that it is well to
make friends with “the Mammon of Unrighteousness”.
Polygamy is permitted among these Indians, but little practiced. Even
the chiefs whose high estate gives them the right to more than one wife
seldom avail themselves of the privilege. The women, as in most
primitive tribes, are the hewers of wood and drawers of water. Dress is
rather a more serious matter with them than among some of the other
Indians, the Chocoes for example. They wear as a rule blouses and two
skirts, where other denizens of the Darien dispense with clothing above
the waist altogether. Their hair is usually kept short. The nose ring is
looked upon as indispensable, and other ornaments of both gold and
silver are worn by both sexes. Americans who have had much to do with
the Indians of the Darien always comment on the extreme reticence shown
by them in speaking of their golden ornaments, or the spot whence they
were obtained. It is as though vague traditions had kept alive the story
of the pestilence of fire and sword which ravaged their land when the
Spaniards swept over it in search of the yellow metal. Gold is in the
Darien in plenty. Everybody knows that, and the one or two mines near
the rivers now being worked afford sufficient proof that the region is
auriferous. But no Indian will tell of the existence of these mines, nor
will any guide a white man to the spot where it is rumored gold is to be
found. Seemingly ineradicably fixed in the inner consciousness of the
Indian is the conviction that the white man’s lust for the yellow metal
is the greatest menace that confronts the well-being of himself and his
people.
The San Blas are decidedly a town-dwelling tribe. They seem to hate
solitude and even today, in their comparatively reduced state, build
villages of a size that make understandable Balboa’s records of the size
and state of the chief with whom he first fought, and then made friends.
At Narganá are two large islands, fairly covered with spacious houses
about 150 feet long by 50 broad. The ridge pole of the palm-thatched
roof is 30 to 40 feet from the ground. A long corridor runs through the
house longitudinally, and on either side the space is divided by upright
posts into square compartments, each of which is supposed to house an
entire family. The side walls are made of wattled reeds caked with clay.
One of these houses holds from sixteen to twenty families, and the
edifices are packed so closely together as to leave scarce room between
for a razor-back hog to browse. The people within must be packed about
as closely and the precise parental relationship sustained to each other
by the various members of the family would be an interesting study.
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy National Geographic Magazine_
GUAYMI INDIAN MAN
Note the tattoed marking of face and the negroid lips]
The Choco Indians are one of the smaller and least known tribes of the
Darien. Prof. Pittier--who may without disrespect be described as the
most seasoned “tropical tramp” of all Central America--described them so
vividly that extracts from his article in the National Geographic
Magazine will be of interest:
“Never, in our twenty-five years of tropical experience, have we met
with such a sun-loving, bright and trusting people, living nearest to
nature and ignoring the most elementary wiles of so-called civilization.
They are several hundred in number and their dwellings are scattered
along the meandrous Sambu and its main reaches, always at short
distance, but never near enough to each other to form real villages.
Like their houses, their small plantations are close to the river, but
mostly far enough to escape the eye of the casual passer-by.
“Dugouts drawn up on the beach and a narrow trail breaking the reed wall
at the edge of the bank are the only visible signs of human presence,
except at the morning hours and near sunset, when a crowd of women and
children will be seen playing in the water, and the men, armed with
their bows and long harpooned arrows, scrutinizing the deeper places for
fish or looking for iguanas and crabs hidden in the holes of the banks.
“Physically the Chocoes are a fine and healthy race. They are tall, as
compared with the Cuna-Cuna, well proportioned, and with a graceful
bearing. The men have wiry limbs and faces that are at once kind and
energetic, while as a rule the girls are plump, fat, and full of
mischief. The grown women preserve their good looks and attractiveness
much longer than is generally the case in primitive peoples, in which
their sex bears the heaviest share of every day’s work.
“Both males and females have unusually fine white teeth, which they
sometimes dye black by chewing the shoots of one of the numerous wild
peppers growing in the forests. The skin is of a rich olive-brown color
and, as usual, a little lighter in women and children. Though all go
almost naked, they look fairer than the San Blas Cunas, and some of the
women would compare advantageously in this respect with certain
Mediterranean types of the white race.
“The hair is left by all to grow to its natural length, except in a few
cases, in which the men have it cropped at the neck. It is coarse and
not jet black, as reported of most Indians, but with a reddish hue,
which is better noticed when the sun is playing through the thick mass.
“In young children it decidedly turns at times to a blond color, the
only difference from the Caucasian hair being the pronounced coarseness
of the former. As there are no white people living within a radius of
fifty miles, but only negroes, mulattoes and zambos, this peculiarity
cannot be explained by miscegenation, and may therefore be considered as
a racial feature of the Choco tribe.
“In men the every-day dress consists of a scanty clout, made of a strip
of red calico about one foot broad and five feet long. This clout is
passed in front and back of the body over a string tied around the hips,
the forward extremity being left longer and flowing like an apron. On
feast days the string is replaced by a broad band of white beads. Around
the neck and chest they wear thick cords of the same beads and on their
wrists broad silver cuffs. Hats are not used; the hair is usually tied
with a red ribbon and often adorned with the bright flowers of the
forest.
“The female outfit is not less simple, consisting of a piece of calico
less than three feet wide and about nine feet long, wrapped around the
lower part of the body and reaching a little below the knees. This is
all, except that the neck is more or less loaded with beads or silver
coins. But for this the women display less coquetry than the men, which
may be because they feel sufficiently adorned with their mere natural
charms. Fondness for cheap rings is, however, common to both sexes, and
little children often wear earrings or pendants.
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy National Geographic Magazine_
INDIAN GIRL OF THE DARIEN]
“The scantiness of the clothing is remedied very effectually by face and
body painting, in which black and red colors are used, the first
exclusively for daily wear. At times men and women are painted black
from the waist down; at other times it is the whole body or only the
hands and feet, etc., all according to the day’s fashion, as was
explained by one of our guides. For feast days the paintings are an
elaborate and artistic affair, consisting of elegantly drawn lines and
patterns--red and black or simply black--which clothe the body as
effectually as any costly dress.
“From the above one might conclude that cleanliness and modesty are not
the rule among the Chocos. As a matter of fact, the first thing they do
in the morning is to jump into the near-by river, and these ablutions
are repeated several times in the course of the day.
“The kitchen utensils are always thoroughly washed before using, and,
contrary to our former experience, their simple dishes, prepared mostly
in our presence, looked almost always inviting. During our stay among
these good people nothing was noticed that would hurt the most delicate
sense of decency.
“The Chocoes seem to be exclusively monogamist, and both parents
surround their babies with tender care, being mindful, however, to
prepare them early for the hard and struggling life ahead of them.
Small bows and arrows, dexterously handled by tiny hands, are the
favorite toys of the boys, while the girls spend more time in the water
playing with miniature dugouts, washing, and swimming. The only dolls
seen among them were imported ones, and they seemed to be as much in
favor among grown women as among children. These latter go naked until
they are about five years old, when the girls receive a large
handkerchief to be used as a ‘paruma’, or skirt, and the boys a strip of
some old maternal dress for an ‘antia’ or clout.
“The Chocoes are very industrious. During the dry spells their life, of
course, is an out-of-door one, planting and watching their crops,
hunting, fishing and canoeing. But when the heavy rains come they stay
at home, weaving baskets of all kinds--a work in which the women are
proficient--making ropes and hammocks, carving dishes, mortars, stools,
and other objects out of tree trunks”.
In the country which will be traversed by the Panama-David Railroad are
found the Guaymies, the only primitive people living in large numbers
outside the Darien. There are about 5000 of them, living for the most
part in the valley of Mirando which lies high up in the Cordilleras, and
in a region cut off from the plains. Here they have successfully
defended their independence against the assaults of both whites and
blacks. To remain in their country without consent of the Great Chief is
practically impossible, for they are savage fighters and in earlier days
it was rare to see a man whose body was not covered with scars. It is
apparent that in some ways progress has destroyed their industries and
made the people less rather than more civilized, for they now buy cloth,
arms, tools, and utensils which they were once able to make. At one time
they were much under the influence of the Catholic missionaries, but of
late mission work has languished in wild Panama and perhaps the chief
relic of that earlier religious influence is the fact that the women go
clothed in a single garment. This simple raiment, not needed for warmth,
seems to be prized, for if caught in a rainstorm the women will quickly
strip off their clothing, wrap it in a large banana or palm leaf that it
may not get wet, and continue their work, or their play, in nature’s
garb.
It is said, too, that when strangers are not near clothes are never
thought of. The men follow a like custom, and invariably when pursuing a
quarry strip off their trousers, tying their shirts about their loins.
Trousers seem to impede their movements, and if a lone traveler in
Chiriqui comes on a row of blue cotton trousers tied to the bushes he
may be sure that a band of Guaymies is somewhere in the neighborhood
pursuing an ant bear or a deer.
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy National Geographic Magazine_
CHOCO INDIAN OF SAMBU VALLEY
Silver beads about his neck and leg. Face painted in glaring colors]
As a rule these Indians--men or women--are not pleasing to the eye. The
lips are thick, the nose flat and broad, the hair coarse and always jet
black. Yet the children are not infrequently really beautiful. Any
traveler in Panama who forsakes the beaten track up and down the Canal
Zone will be impressed by the wide extent to which beauty is found among
the children, whatever their race or combination of races. But the charm
soon fades. It is seldom that one sees a mature woman who is attractive
to Caucasian eyes. Among the women of the Guaymies face painting is
practiced only on great occasions, black, red and white being the usual
colors. The men go painted at all times, the invariable pattern being a
sort of inverted V, with the apex between the eyes, and the two arms
extending to points, half an inch or so from the corners of the mouth.
The lips are colored to make them seem thicker than normal, and heavy
shadows are painted in under the eyes.
Among some tribes the wealth of a man is reckoned by the number of his
cattle; among the Guaymies by the number of his wives. For this reason,
perhaps, the attainment of marriageable age is an occasion of much
festivity for children of both sexes. The boy is exposed to tests of his
manly and war-like qualities, and, in company with his fellows of equal
age, is taken by the wisemen of the tribe into the solitude of the
forest that by performing tasks assigned to him he may prove himself a
man. There, too, they learn from the elders, who go masked and crowned
with wreaths, the traditions of their tribes told in rude chants like
the Norse sagas. Until this ceremony has been fulfilled the youth has no
name whatsoever. After it he is named and celebrates his first birthday.
The ceremonies in which the girls play the chief part are less
elaborate, but one would think rather painful, since they include the
breaking of a front tooth in sign that they are ready for marriage. They
marry young and mothers at twelve years are not uncommon.
Once a year the Guaymies have a great tribal feast--“balceria” the
Spaniards call it. Word is sent to all outlying huts and villages by a
mystic symbol of knotted rags, which is also tied to the branches of the
trees along the more frequented trails. On the appointed day several
hundred will gather on the banks of some river in which a general bath
is taken, with much frolicking and horseplay. Then the women employ
several hours in painting the men with red and blue colors, following
the figures still to be seen on the old pottery, after which the men
garb themselves uncouthly in bark or in pelts like children “dressing
up” for a frolic. At night is a curious ceremonial dance and game called
balsa, in which the Indians strike each other with heavy sticks, and are
knocked down amid the pile of broken boughs. The music--if it could be
so called--the incantations of the wisemen, the frenzy of the dancers,
all combine to produce a sort of self-hypnotism, during which the
Indians feel no pain from injuries which a day later often prove to be
very serious.
[Illustration: PANAMANIAN FATHER AND CHILD]
There are a multitude of distinct Indian tribes on the Isthmus, each
with its own tribal government, its distinctive customs and its allotted
territory, though boundaries are, of course, exceedingly vague and the
territories overlap. The Smithsonian pamphlet enumerates 21 such tribes
in the Darien region alone. But there seems to be among them no such
condition of continual tribal warfare as existed between our North
American Indians as long as they survived in any considerable numbers
the aggressions of the white settlers. It is true that the historian of
Balboa’s expedition records that the great leader was besought by
chieftains to assist them in their affrays with rival tribes, and made
more than one alliance by giving such assistance. But the later
atrocities perpetrated by the Spaniards seem to have had the effect of
uniting the Indians in a tacit peaceful bond against the whites.
Picturesque and graphic as are the writings of men like Esquemeling, the
Fray d’Acosta and Wafer, who saw the Indians in the days of their
earliest experience with the sort of civilization that Pedrarias and
Pizarro brought to their villages, they do not bear more convincing
evidence of the savagery of the invaders, than is afforded by the sullen
aloofness with which the Darien Indians of today regard white men of any
race. More than the third and fourth generation have passed away but the
sins of the Spaniards are still recalled among a people who have no
written records whatsoever, and the memory or tradition causes them to
withhold their friendship from the remotest descendants of the historic
oppressors.
There seems to have been no written language, nor even any system of
hieroglyphics among the tribes of Panama, a fact that places them far
below our North American Indians in the scale of mental development. On
the other hand in weaving and in fashioning articles for domestic use
they were in advance of the North American aborigines. Their domestic
architecture was more substantial, and they were less nomadic, the
latter fact being probably due to the slight encouragement given to
wandering by the jungle. The great houses of the San Blas Indians in
their villages recall the “Long houses” of the Iroquois as described by
Parkman.
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy National Geographic Magazine_
CHOCO INDIAN IN EVERY-DAY DRESS]
Thus far what we call civilization has dealt less harshly with the
Indians of the Isthmus than with our own. They have at least survived it
and kept a great part of their territory for their own. The “squaw-man”
who figures so largely in our own southwestern Indian country is unknown
there. Unquestionably during the feverish days of the Spaniards’ hunt
for gold the tribes were frightfully thinned out, and even today
sections of the country which writers of Balboa’s time describe as
thickly populated are desert and untenanted. Yet much land is still held
by its aboriginal owners, and unless the operation of the Canal shall
turn American settlement that way will continue so to be held. The
Panamanian has not the energy to dislodge the Indians nor to till their
lands if he should possess them.
Many studies of the Panama Indians as a body, or of isolated tribes,
have been made by explorers or scientists, and mainly by French or
Spanish students. The Smithsonian Institution catalogues forty-seven
publications dealing with the subject. But there is an immense mine of
anthropological information yet to be worked in the Isthmus. It is not
to be acquired readily or without heavy expenditure of energy, patience
and money. A thoroughly scientific exploring expedition to unravel the
riddle of the Darien, to count and describe the Indian tribes of the
Isthmus, and to record and authenticate traditions dating back to the
Spanish days, would be well worth the while of a geographical society, a
university or some patron of exploring enterprises.
CHAPTER XVII
SOCIAL LIFE ON THE CANAL ZONE
From ocean to ocean the territory which is called the Canal Zone is
about forty-three miles long, ten miles wide and contains about 436
square miles, about ninety-five of which are under the waters of the
Canal, and Miraflores and Gatun Lakes. It is bounded on the north by the
Caribbean Sea, on the south by the Pacific Ocean, and on the east and
west by the Republic of Panama. It traverses the narrowest part of
Panama, the waist so to speak, and has been taken out of that body
politic by the diplomatic surgeons as neatly as though it had been an
obnoxious vermiform appendix. Its territory does not terminate at low
water-mark, but extends three marine miles out to sea, and, as I write,
a question of jurisdiction has arisen between the two Republics--hardly
twin Republics--of Panama and the United States concerning jurisdiction
over three malefactors captured by the Zone police in a motor boat out
at sea. It may be noted in passing that Panama is properly tenacious of
its rights and dignity, and that cases of conflicting jurisdiction are
continually arising when any offender has only to foot it a mile or two
to be out of the territory in which his offense was committed. The
police officials of the Zone affect to think that the Panama authorities
are inclined to deal lightly with native offenders who commit robbery or
murder on the Zone and then stroll across the line to be arrested in
their native State.
[Illustration: A SQUAD OF CANAL ZONE POLICE OFFICERS]
There was a quarrel on while I was on the Zone over the custody of a
Panamanian who killed his wife, with attendant circumstances of
peculiar brutality, and then balked the vengeance of the Zone criminal
authorities by getting himself arrested in Panama. “We want to show
these fellows”, remarked a high police official of the Zone, “that if
they do murder in our territory we are going to do the hanging”. That
seemed a laudable purpose--that is if hanging is ever laudable--but the
Panama officials are quite as determined to keep the wheels of their
criminal law moving. The proprietors of machines like to see them
run--which is one of the reasons why too many battleships are not good
for a nation.
[Illustration: A PRIMITIVE SUGAR MILL]
To return, however, to the statistics of the Zone. Its population is
shifting, of course, and varies somewhat in its size according to the
extent to which labor is in demand. The completion of a part of the work
occasionally reduces the force. In January, 1912, the total population
of the Zone, according to the official census, was 62,810; at the same
time, by the same authority, there were employed by the Canal Commission
and the Panama Railroad 36,600 men. These figures emphasize the fact
that the working force on the Zone is made up mainly of unmarried men,
for a working population of 36,600 would, under the conditions existing
in the ordinary American community, give a population of well over
100,000. Though statistics are not on hand, and would probably be
impossible to compile among the foreign laborers, it is probable that
not more than one man in four on the Zone is married. From this
situation it results that the average maiden who visits the Zone for a
brief holiday goes rushing home to get her trousseau ready before some
young engineer’s next annual vacation shall give him time to go like a
young Lochinvar in search of his bride. Indeed, the life of the Zone for
many reasons has been singularly conducive to matrimony, and as a game
preserve for the exciting sport of husband-hunting, it has been
unexcelled.
[Illustration: VINE-CLAD FAMILY QUARTERS]
[Illustration: QUARTERS OF A BACHELOR TEACHER]
Perhaps it may be as well to turn aside from the orderly and informative
discussion of the statistics of the Zone to expand a little further here
upon the remarkable matrimonial phenomena it presented in its halcyon
days--for it must be remembered that even as I am writing, that society,
which I found so hospitable and so admirable, has begun to disintegrate.
Marriage, it must be admitted, is a somewhat cosmopolitan passion. It
attacks spiggotty and gringo alike. In an earlier chapter I have
described how the low cost of living enabled Miguel of the Chagres
country to set up a home of his own. Let us consider how the benevolent
arrangements made by the Isthmian Canal Commission impelled a typical
American boy to the same step.
Probably it was more a desire for experience and adventure than any idea
of increased financial returns that led young Jack Maxon to seek a job
in engineering on the Canal. Graduated from the engineering department
of a State university, with two years or so of active experience in the
field, Jack was a fair type of young American--clean, wholesome,
healthy, technically trained, ambitious for his future but quite
solicitious about the pleasures of the present, as becomes a youth of
twenty-three.
[Illustration: MAIN STREET AT GORGONA]
The job he obtained seemed at the outset quite ideal. In the States he
could earn about $225 a month. The day he took his number on the Canal
Zone he began to draw $250 a month. And that $250 was quite as good as
$300 at home. To begin with he had no room-rent to pay, but was assigned
comfortable if not elegant quarters, which he shared with one other man;
carefully screened and protected from all insects by netting, lighted by
electricity, with a shower-bath handy and all janitor or chambermaid
service free. Instead of a boarding-house table or a cheap city
restaurant, he took his meals at a Commission hotel at a charge of
thirty cents a meal. People say that the fare could not be duplicated in
the States for seventy-five cents, but I prefer to quote that statement
rather than to make it on my own authority. By taking two meals a day
and making the third of fruit, or a sandwich at a Y. M. C. A. clubhouse,
he would cut his restaurant charges to $18 a month; the whole three
meals would come to $27.80, so however voracious his appetite Bachelor
Jack’s charges for food are light and for shelter nothing. Clothing
troubles him little; his working clothes of khaki, and several suits of
white cotton duck will cost him less than one woolen suit such as he
must have “up home”. All seasons are alike on the Zone, and there is no
need of various types of hats, overcoats and underwear.
All in all Bachelor Jack thinks he has come in for a good thing.
Moreover, he gets a vacation of forty-two days on pay, a sick leave of
thirty days on pay--and the sanitarium on the Island of Taboga being a
very pleasant resort few fail to have slight ailments requiring
precisely thirty days’ rest--and nine holidays also with pay. All in all
Jack is neither overworked nor underpaid. His letters to his chums at
home tell no stories of adversity but rather indicate that he is
enjoying exceedingly good times. With reasonable care he will have ample
means for really lavish expenditures on his vacation. Indeed it would
require rather unreasonable effort to spend an engineer’s salary on the
zone unless it went in riotous living in Panama City or Colon.
But a vision of better things opens before him--is always spread out
before his enraptured vision. His friend who came down a year or two
before him and who is earning only a little bit more money sets a
standard of living which arouses new ambitions in Jack’s mind. His
friend is married. Instead of one room shared with one or more tired
engineers subject to grouches, he has a four-room apartment with
bath--really a five-room flat, for the broad sheltered balconies shaded
by vines form the real living room. Instead of eating at the crowded,
noisy hotels, he has his quiet dining-room, and menus dictated by
individual taste instead of by the mechanical methods of a Chief of
Subsistence. Practically everything that can be done for the household
by official hands is done free by the Commission--free rent, free light,
free janitor service, free distilled water, free fuel for cooking--the
climate saves that bugbear of married life at home, the annual coal
bill. Moreover the flat or house comes to its tenant freely furnished.
The smallest equipment supplied consists of a range, two kitchen chairs,
a double bed, a mosquito bar, two pillows, a chiffonier, a double
dresser, a double mattress, a dining table, six dining chairs, a
sideboard, a bed-room mat, two center tables and three wicker porch
chairs. This equipment is for the moderately paid employees who live in
four-family quarters. The outfit is made more comprehensive as salaries
increase.
[Illustration: IN THE LOBBY OF A Y. M. C. A. CLUB]
Housekeepers must buy their own tableware, bedclothes, light furniture
and bric-à-brac. But here again the paternal Commission comes to the
rescue, for these purchases, and all others needful for utility, comfort
or beauty, are made at the Commissary stores, where goods are sold
practically at cost. Moreover, there is no protective tariff collected
on imported goods and it would take another article to relate the
rhapsodies of the Zone women over the prices at which they can buy
Boulton tableware, Irish linen, Swiss and Scandinavian delicatessen, and
French products of all sorts. And finally, to round out the privileges
of married life on the Zone, medical service is free and little Tommy’s
slightest ill may be prescribed for without fear of the doctor’s
bill--though, indeed, the children you see romping in the pleasant
places do not look as though they ever needed a prescription or a pill.
So Jack looks from his bachelor quarters over toward Married Row and it
looks good to him. His amusements are but limited and his life does
verge on the monotonous. His only place of recreation is the Y. M. C.
A., which, while filling the want admirably week days, is a bit solemn
Sundays--his only day off. The only theaters on the Zone are at Colon
and Panama, and those are in the main only exhibitions of “movies.”
Moreover, the Panama Railroad has thoughtfully arranged its schedule so
that no Zone employee can go to the theater save on Saturday or Sunday
night without staying out all night. As Jack smokes in his half a room
(perhaps only a quarter) or wrangles with his roommate for place at the
table lighted by one electric light his mind naturally turns toward the
comforts enjoyed by his married friends, and he sees himself greeted on
his return from toil in the jungle or the “Cut” by a cool, trim divinity
in white, instead of by a lumbering giant in muddy khaki, as weary,
hungry and grouchy as he.
[Illustration: STREET SCENE IN CULEBRA]
Were he at home prudence would compel the consideration of cost. Here
the paternal Commission puts a premium on matrimony. Very often, so
often, indeed, that it is almost the rule, Jack returns from his first
vacation home with a wife, or else coming alone is followed by the girl,
and all goes merry as a marriage bell. But the time comes when Jack, a
bachelor no longer, but a husband and perhaps a father, must leave the
Isthmus. That time must come for all of them when the work is done.
Enough, however, have already gone home to tell sad tales of the
difficulty of readjusting themselves to normal conditions. Down comes
the salary at least twenty-five per cent, up go living expenses at least
thirty per cent. Nothing at home is free--coal, light, rent, and medical
service least of all. Where Jack used to be lordly, he must be
parsimonious; where he once bought untaxed in the markets of the world,
he must buy in the most expensive of all market places, the United
States. He absolutely cannot maintain at home the standard of life he
adopted here, and the change with the endless little economies and
pettinesses it entails gets on the nerves of both husband and wife. To
start life thriftily and learn to be free-handed as prosperity increases
is the natural line of development and does not mar happiness. But to be
forced to pinch after a long period of lavishness is wearing. Back to
the Zone come so many stories of romances begun by the Canal and ended
in the divorce courts that one wonders if the paternalism of the
Commission has been good for those who enjoyed it.
But it has been good for the supreme purpose of digging the Canal and
that was the one end sought.
[Illustration: YOUNG AMERICA AT PLAY]
Let me return from this excursion into the domain of matrimonial
philosophy and take up once again the account of the population of the
Zone and its characteristics. It must be remembered that a very large
part of the unskilled labor on the Canal is done by negroes from Jamaica
and Barbadoes. But not all of it. The cleavage was not so distinct that
the skilled labor could be classed as white, and the unskilled black,
for among the latter were many Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians and the
peoples of Southwestern Europe. The brilliant idea occurred to someone
in the early days of the American campaign that as the West Indians,
Panamanians and Latin-Americans generally were accustomed to do their
monetary thinking in terms of silver all day labor might be put on the
silver pay roll; the more highly paid workers on a gold pay roll.
Thenceforward the metal line rather than the color line was drawn. The
latter indeed would have been difficult as the Latin-American peoples
never drew it very definitely in their marital relations, with the
result that a sort of twilight zone made any very positive
differentiation between whites and blacks practically impossible. So
despite Bobby Burns’ historic dictum--
“the gowd is but the guinea’s stamp
The man’s the man for a’ that”,
on the Zone the man is silver or gold according to the nature of his
work and the size of his wages. Of gold employees there were in 1913,
5362, of silver 31,298, so it is easy to see which pay roll bore the
names of the aristocracy.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
HINDOO MERCHANTS AT A ZONE TOWN]
Practically all of the gold force are Americans. It is for them, in the
main, that the cool, dark green houses with white trimmings, and all
carefully screened in, are built. For them the buyers of the Commissary
ransack the markets of the world, buying only the best. For them the
Hotel Tivoli at Ancon and the Washington Hotel at Colon were built,
though it is true that tourist trade rather than the patronage of the
Canal workers supports them. For them are eighteen hotels,
so-called--really only eating houses--scattered along the line, serving
excellent meals for thirty cents each. Indeed, most of the features of
Isthmian life which catch the eye of the tourist and make him think
existence there quite ideal are planned to make the place attractive
enough to keep the gold employees on the job. To him that hath shall be
given, and it required greater inducements to anchor to a desk in Panama
the man capable of earning a good salary at home than it did to hold the
negro from Jamaica or Martinique, or the Spaniard or Italian steady to
his job.
[Illustration: THE NATIVE MILLS GRIND SLOWLY]
In endeavoring to make things pleasant and easy for the gold employee
the Isthmian Commission has made so many provisions for his comfort that
many timid souls at home raised the cry of “socialism” and professed to
discern in the system perfected by Col. Goethals the entering wedge that
would split in pieces the ancient system of free competition and the
contract system for public work. While I was on the Zone a very
distinguished financier of New York, a banker of the modern type with
fingers in a host of industrial enterprises, delivered himself of this
interesting forecast of the results of the education in collectivism
which the United States government is giving to some thousands of men
upon the Isthmus:
“The big thing is the spirit of paternalism, of modern socialism, of
governmental parenthood, if you will, which is being engendered and
nursed to full strength by Federal control of the Canal. This is no idle
dream, and within five years, yes, within three years, it will begin to
be felt in the United States.
[Illustration: COMMISSION ROAD NEAR EMPIRE]
“Quietly large corporations are studying this feature of the unloading
of the skilled, highly intelligent Canal workers on the industries of
the United States. There are thousands of trained employees of the
Panama Canal Commission--which is to say of the United States
government. When these well paid, lightly worked, well and cheaply fed
men return to their native land they will form a powerful addition to
the Socialist party.
“These workmen will take up tasks for private corporations. They will
find lower salaries, longer hours and a greatly increased cost of
living. The conveniences and amusements which they have found either
free or very cheap in the Canal Zone will be beyond the reach of many of
them, and they are going to chafe under the changed conditions.
“They will compare private or corporate ownership with government
control as manifested in the Canal works, and the comparison will
inevitably result to the detriment of the methods followed in the United
States. This will be in no sense an array of capital against labor. It
will be a psychological and political movement for the betterment of the
conditions of the trained worker irrespective of party or class or union
affiliations. That is one reason that it will be so powerful.
“These men will be engaged in industries subject to strikes and other
industrial and sociological disturbances. They will give their fellow
workmen, who have always been employed in the United States, a new and
logical idea of the value of government ownership and its advantages to
the workingman as shown on the Canal Zone.
“Around them will gather the socialists, the union men who think for
themselves and all other upper class workingmen. Do not mistake my
meaning. This will be no Coxey’s army movement, no gathering of the
riffraff of failures seeking to rob the toiler of his gains or the
investor of his dollars, but earnest men, whose weapon will not be the
torch and the dynamite bomb, but the ballot. By their votes and the
enormous following they can rally to their standard they will force the
government to take over the public utilities, if not all the large
corporations, of the country. They will force the adoption of government
standards of work, wages and cost of living as exemplified in the work
on the Canal. In other words the influx of workers will lead directly to
paternalism”.
Let us, however, consider this bogy of socialism fairly. Before
proceeding to a more detailed account of the manner of life upon the
Canal Zone let me outline hastily the conditions which regarded
superficially seem socialistic, and with a line or two show why they are
not so at all.
[Illustration: THE FIRE FORCE OF CRISTOBAL]
Our Uncle Sam owns and manages a line of steamships plying between New
York and Panama, carrying both passengers and freight and competing
successfully with several lines of foreign-built ships. The largest
vessels are of ten thousand tons and would rank well with the lesser
transatlantic liners. On them Congressmen and Panama Zone officials are
carried free, while employees of the Isthmian Canal Commission get an
exceedingly low rate for themselves and their families. The government
also owns and conducts the Panama Railroad, which crosses in less than
three hours from the Atlantic to the Pacific, while the privately owned
railroads of the United States take about seven days to pass from one
ocean to the other. This sounds like a mighty good argument for
government ownership and it is not much more fallacious than some others
drawn from Isthmian conditions. The President of the Panama Railroad is
Col. George W. Goethals. The government caught him young, educated him
at its excellent West Point school, paying him a salary while he was
learning to be useful, and has been employing and paying him ever since.
Like a citizen of the ideal Co-operative Commonwealth he has never had
to worry about a job. The State has always employed him and paid him.
While he has done his work better than others of equal rank, he has only
recently begun to draw any more pay than other colonels. Sounds very
socialistic, doesn’t it? And he seems to make a very good railroad
president too, though the shuffling of shares in Wall Street had nothing
to do with his appointment, and he hasn’t got a director on his board
interlocked with J. P. Morgan & Co., or the City National Bank.
[Illustration: ORCHIDS ON GOV. THATCHER’S PORCH]
The government which runs this railroad and steamship line doesn’t
confine its activity to big things. It will wash a shirt for one of its
Canal employees at about half the price that John Chinaman doing
business nearby would charge, press his clothing, or it will send a man
into your home--if you live in the Zone--to chloroform any stray
mosquitoes lurking there and convey them away in a bottle. It will house
in an electric-lighted, wire-screened tenement, a Jamaica negro who at
home lived in a basket-work shack, plastered with mud and thatched with
palmetto leaves. It is very democratic too, this government, for it
won’t issue to Mrs. Highflyer more than three wicker arm-chairs, even if
she does entertain every day, while her neighbor Mrs. Domus who gets
just exactly as many never entertains at all. It can be just too mean
for anything, like socialism, which we are so often told “puts everybody
on a dead level.”
The dream of the late Edward Bellamy is given actuality on the Zone
where we find a great central authority, buying everything imaginable in
all the markets of the world, at the moment when prices are lowest--an
authority big enough to snap its fingers at any trust--and selling again
without profit to the ultimate consumers. There are no trust profits, no
middleman’s profits included in prices of things bought at the
Commissary stores. There are eighteen such stores in the Zone. The total
business of the Commissary stores amounts to about $6,000,000 annually.
Everything is sold at prices materially less than it can be bought in
the United States, yet the department shows an actual profit, which is
at once put back into the business. A Zone housewife told me that a
steak for her family that would cost at least ninety cents in her home
in Brooklyn cost her forty here. Shoddy or merely “cheap” goods are not
carried and the United States pure food law is strictly observed. That
terrible problem of the “higher cost of living” hardly presents itself
to Zone dwellers except purchasers of purely native products; those,
thanks to the tourists, have doubled in price several times in the last
five years. But articles purveyed by Uncle Sam are furnished to his
nephews and nieces here for about one-third less than the luckless ones
must pay who are sticking to the old homestead instead of faring forth
to the tropics.
I have already enumerated the valuable privileges, like free quarters,
light, furniture, medical service, etc., supplied to the Zone worker
without charge. If all these apparent gratuities were accompanied by a
rate of pay lower than that in force for like occupations in the States
it might be fair to say, as one of the most careful writers on Isthmian
topics says, “these form part of the contract the employee makes with
the government, and are just as much part of his pay as his monthly
salary”. But that pay averages twenty-five per cent higher than at home.
The things enumerated are looked upon by those who receive them as
gratuities, and rightly so. They are, in fact, extra inducements offered
by Uncle Sam to persuade men to come and work on his Canal and to keep
them happy and contented while doing so.
Now the chief material argument for the socialistic state, the
co-operative commonwealth, is that it will secure for every citizen
comfort and contentment, so far as contentment is possible to restless
human minds; that it will abolish at a stroke monopoly and privilege,
purge society of parasites, add to the efficiency of labor and
proportionately increase its rewards. All of which is measurably
accomplished on the Canal Zone and the less cautious socialists--the
well-grounded ones see the difference--are excusable for hailing the
government there as an evidence of the practicability of socialism.
But it isn’t--at least not quite. The incarnation of the difference
between this and socialism is Col. George W. Goethals. Nobody on the
Zone had part in electing Goethals; nobody can say him nay, or abate or
hinder in any degree his complete personal control of all that is done
here. This is not the co-operative commonwealth we long have sought.
Rather is it like the commonwealth of old with Oliver Cromwell as Lord
Protector--and at that Goethals has no parliament to purge.
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy National Geographic Magazine_
THE CATASETUM SCURRA
A curiously shaped orchid rediscovered by Mrs. H. H. Rousseau]
This is a benevolent despotism, the sort of government that philosophers
agree would be ideal if the benevolence of the despot could only be
assured invariably and eternally. The Czar of Russia could do what is
being done down there were he vested with Goethals’ intolerance of
bureaucracies, red-tape, parasites, grafters, disobedience and delay.
But Goethals is equally intolerant of opposition, argument, even advice
from below. His is the military method of personal command and personal
responsibility. I don’t believe he is over-fond even of the council of
war. In a socialistic community, where every man had a voice in the
government, he would last only long enough for a new election to be
called. Though his popularity there is universal, it would not withstand
the attacks of demagogues were there field for demagogy.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
MARRIED QUARTERS AT COROZAL]
But what has been done, and is still doing, on the Zone is not
socialistic, because it is done from the top, by the orders of an
autocrat, instead of by an act of a town meeting. One might as well say
that the patience, prudence, attention to detail, insistence on proper
sanitation which enabled Japan’s great General Nogi to keep his army in
the field with the minimum loss from preventable sickness was all
socialistic. Col. Goethals commanded an army. The Isthmus was the enemy.
The army must be fed and clothed, hence the Commissary. Its
communications must be kept open, hence the steamship line and the
railroad. The soldiers must be housed, and as it became early apparent
that the siege was to be a long one the camps were built of timber
instead of tents. There is nothing new about that. Back in the fifteenth
century Queen Isabella, concluding that it would take a long time to
starve the Moors out of Granada, kept her soldiers busy building a city
of stone and mortar before the walls of the beleaguered town. Culebra
has been a more stubborn fortress than was ever Granada.
[Illustration: FIGHTING THE INDUSTRIOUS ANT]
No. The organization of the Zone has been purely military, not
socialistic. It was created for a purpose and it will vanish when that
purpose has been attained. Admirably adapted to its end it had many
elements of charm to those living under it. The Zone villages, even
those like Culebra and Gorgona which are to be abandoned, were beautiful
in appearance, delightful in social refinement. Culebra with its winding
streets, bordered by tropical shrubbery in which nestled the cool and
commodious houses of the engineers and higher employees, leading up to
the hill crested by the residence of the Colonel--of course there were
five colonels on the Commission, but only one “The Colonel”--Culebra was
a delight to the visitor and must have been a joy to the resident.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: FOLIAGE ON THE ZONE]
[Illustration]
Try to figure to yourself the home of a young engineer as I saw it. The
house is two storeys with a pent-house roof, painted dark green, with
the window frames, door casings and posts of the broad verandas, by
which it is nearly surrounded, done in shining white. Between the posts
is wire netting and behind is a piazza probably twelve feet wide which
in that climate is as good as a room for living, eating or sleeping
purposes. The main body of the house is oblong, about fifty feet long by
thirty to forty feet deep. A living-room and dining-room fill the entire
front. The hall, instead of running from the front to the back of the
house, as is customary with us, runs across the house, back of these two
rooms. It is in no sense an entry, though it has a door opening from the
garden, but separates the living-rooms from the kitchen and other
working rooms. The stairway ascends from this hall to the second floor
where two large bed-rooms fill the front of the house, a big bath-room,
a bed-room and the dry-room being in the rear. About that last apartment
let me go into some detail. The climate of the Zone is always rather
humid, and in the rainy season you can wring water out of everything
that can absorb it. So in each house is a room kept tightly closed with
two electric lights in it burning day and night. Therein are kept all
clothes, shoes, etc., not in actual use, and the combined heat and light
keep damp and mold out of the goods thus stored. Mold is one of the
chief pests of the Panama housekeeper. You will see few books in even
the most tastefully furnished houses, because the mold attacks their
bindings. Every piano has an electric light inserted within its case and
kept burning constantly to dispel the damp. By way of quieting the alarm
of readers it may be mentioned again that electric light is furnished
free to Isthmian Commission employees. “We always laugh”, said a hostess
one night, as she looked back at my darkened room in her house from the
walk outside, “at the care people from the States take to turn out the
lights. We enjoy being extravagant and let them burn all day if we feel
like it”.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE CHIEF COMMISSARY AT CRISTOBAL]
In such a house there is no plaster. From within you see the entire
frame of the house--uprights, joists, stanchions, floor beams, all--and
the interior is painted as a rule precisely like the exterior without
the white trimming. You don’t notice this at first. Then it fascinates
you. You think it amusing and improper to see a house’s underpinning so
indecently exposed. All that we cover with laths, plaster, calcimine and
wall paper is here naked to the eye. Only a skin of half-inch lumber
intervenes between you and the outer world, or the people in the next
room. You notice the windows look strange. There is no sash. To a house
of the sort I am describing four or six glass windows are allotted to be
put in the orifices the housekeeper may select. The other windows are
unclosed except at night, when you may, if you wish, swing heavy board
shutters across them.
A house of the type I have described is known as Type 10, and is
assigned to employees drawing from $300 to $400 a month. Those getting
from $200 to $300 a month are assigned either to quarters in a
two-family house, or to a small cottage of six or seven rooms, though,
as the supply of the latter is limited, they are greatly prized.
Employees drawing less than $200 a month have four-room flats in
buildings accommodating four families. Those who receive more than $400
a month are given large houses of a type distinguished by spaciousness
and artistic design.
When you come to analyze it such houses are only large shacks, and yet
their proportions and coloring, coupled with their obvious fitness for
the climate, make them, when tastefully furnished and decorated,
thoroughly artistic homes. For these homes the Commission furnishes all
the bare essentials. With mechanical precision it furnishes the number
of tables, chairs, beds and dressers which the Commission in its
sovereign wisdom has decided to be proper for a gentleman of the station
in life to which that house is fitted. For the merely æsthetic the
Commission cares nothing, though it is fair to say that the furniture
it supplies, though commonplace, is not in bad taste. But for decoration
the Zone dwellers must go down into their own pockets and to a greater
or less degree all do so. The authorities have not gone to the extent of
prohibiting this rivalry as at West Point and Annapolis where the cadets
are not permitted to decorate their rooms lest inequality and
mortification result. But in Panama the climate enforces such a
prohibition to some extent. Luxury there would be positive discomfort.
Costly rugs and hangings, richly upholstered furniture are out of place.
Air space is the greatest luxury, and a room cluttered with objects of
priceless art would be scarcely habitable.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
WHAT THE SLIDE DID TO THE RAILROAD
The pernicious activity of slides occasionally creates this novel
condition in railroad construction]
Within their limitations, however, the hostesses of the Zone have made
their homes thoroughly charming. The visitor was, I think, most
impressed by those who frankly used the trimmings of the tropics for
their chief decorations. The orchid-lined porches of Mrs. M. H.
Thatcher, wife of the civil commissioner, or Mrs. H. H. Rousseau, wife
of the naval representative on the Commission, were a veritable
fairyland when the swift tropic night had fallen and the colored lights
began to glow among the rustling palms and delicately tinted orchids. No
more beautiful apartment could possibly be imagined.
[Illustration: NOT FROM JAMAICA BUT THE Y. M. C. A.]
Housekeeping is vastly simplified by the Commissary. When there is but
one place to shop, and only one quality of goods to select from--namely
the best, for that is all the Commissary carries--the shopping tasks of
the housekeeper are reduced to a minimum. Nevertheless they
grumble--perhaps because women like to shop, more probably because this
situation creates a dull and monotonous sameness amongst the families.
“What’s the good of giving a dinner party”, asked a hostess
plaintively, “when your guests all know exactly what everything on your
table costs, and they can guess just what you are going to serve? They
say, ‘I wish she’d bought lamb at the Commissary, it costs just the same
as turkey’. Or ‘the Commissary had new asparagus today. Wonder why she
took cauliflower’? They get the Commissary list just as I do and know
exactly to what I am limited, as we can only buy at the Commissary.
There is no chance for the little surprises that make an interesting
dinner party”.
[Illustration: A BACHELOR’S QUARTERS]
That is perhaps a trifle disquieting to the adventurous housekeeper,
but, except for the purpose of entertaining, the Commissary must be a
great boon. Its selection of household necessities is sufficiently
varied to meet every need; the quality the best and its prices are
uniformly lower than in the United States. This comparative cheapness in
prices is, of course, due to the elimination of the middlemen, the
buying by the commissary in large quantities and the disregard of profit
as an element in the business. There is but one step between the Beef
Trust, or other manufacturers, and the ultimate consumers on the Zone.
The one intermediary is the Commissary. It buys in such quantities that
it can be sure of the lowest prices. It buys in markets 3,000 miles or
more away from its stores, but it gets the lowest freight rates and an
all-water carriage from New York. Finally it pays no rent and seeks no
profit, hence its prices should be the lowest. Here is a selection from
the printed list issued in April, 1913, from which any house-keeper can
judge of Zone prices:
Veal Cutlets, per pound 17c
Lamb Chops, per pound 24c
Corned Beef, No. 1 14c
Sirloin Steak, per pound 19c
Halibut, fresh, per pound 15c
Chickens, fancy roasting, 5¹⁄₂ pounds each $1.25
Ducks, blackhead, pair 60c
Pork, salt, family 14c
Eggs, fresh, dozen 25c
Butter, creamery, special 41c
American Cheese, per pound 22c
Celery, per head 11c
Cabbage, per pound 3c
Onions, per pound 3c
Potatoes, white, per pound 3c
Turnips, per pound 3c
Grapefruit, each 4c
Oranges, Jamaica, per dozen 12c
[Illustration: THE TIVOLI HOTEL]
[Illustration: THE GRAPE FRUIT OF PANAMA]
If, however, the Commissary system reduces life to something of a
general uniformity and destroys shopping as a subject of conversation,
the ladies of the Zone still have the eternal servant problem of which
to talk. De Amicis, the travel writer, said that servants formed the one
universal topic for conversation and that he bid a hasty farewell to his
mother in Naples after a monologue on the sins of servants, only to
find, at his first dinner in Amsterdam, whither he had traveled with all
possible speed, that the same topic engrossed the mind of his hostess
there. In Panama the matter is somewhat simplified by the fact that only
one type of servant is obtainable, namely the Jamaica negress. It is
complicated by the complete lack of intelligence offices. If a
housekeeper wants a maid she asks her friends to spread the tidings to
their servants, and then waits, supine, until the treasure comes to the
door. Servants out of employment seek it by trudging from house to house
and from village to village. Once hired they do what they have to do and
no more. Among them is none of the spirit of loyalty which makes the
“old Southern mammy” a figure in our fiction, nor any of the energy
which in the Northern States Bridget contributes to household
life--though, indeed, Bridget is disappearing from domestic service
before the flood of Scandinavians and Germans.
The only wail I heard on the Isthmus about the increasing cost of living
had to do with the wages of servants. “In the earlier days”, said one of
my hostesses reminiscently, “it was possible to get servants for very
low wages. They were accustomed to doing little and getting little, as
in Jamaica and other West Indian islands, where many servants are
employed by one family, each with a particular ‘line’. People say that
in Panama City servants can still be found who will work for $5 silver
($2.50) per month, and that Americans have spoiled them by paying too
much. But I think they have developed a capacity for work and management
equal to that of servants in the States and deserve their increased
wages. I pay $15, gold, a month to my one capable servant. Occasionally
you will find one who will work for $10, but many get $20 if they are
good cooks and help with baby. Probably $12 to $15 is an average price.
“These Jamaica servants speak very English English--you can’t call it
Cockney, for they don’t drop their h’s, but it differs greatly from our
American English. They are very fond of big words, which they usually
use incorrectly, especially the men. A Commissary salesman, to whom I
sent a note asking for five pounds of salt meat, sent back the child who
carried it to ‘ask her mother to differentiate’, meaning what kind of
salt meat. A cook asked me once ‘the potatoes to crush, ma’am’? meaning
to ask if they were to be mashed. Another after seizing time to air a
blanket between showers reported exultantly, ‘the rain did let it sun,
mum’. And always when they wish to know if you want hot water they
inquire, ‘the water to hot, mum’?
[Illustration: PURE PANAMA, PURE INDIAN AND ALL BETWEEN]
“Their names are usually elaborate. Celeste, Geraldine, Katherine,
Eugenie, are some that I recall. My own maid is Susannah, which reminds
me--without reflecting on this particular one--that as a class they are
hopelessly unmoral, though extremely religious withal. I have known them
to be clean and efficient, but as a rule they are quite the reverse.
Some are woefully ignorant of modern utensils. One for example, being
new to kitchen ranges, built a fire in the oven on the first day of her
service. Another, having been carefully instructed always to take a
visitor’s card on a tray, neglected the trim salver provided for that
purpose and extended to the astonished caller a huge lacquered tin tray
used for carrying dishes from the kitchen.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT
OLD LANDING AT TABOGA
The concrete walls leading from the beach up to the level of the street
were built as a memorial of the successful revolution of 1905.]
“I’ll never forget”, concluded my hostess between smiles, and sorrow,
“how I felt when I saw that lonesome little card reposing on the broad
black and battered expanse of that nasty old tray”!
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
INTERIOR OF GATUN Y. M. C. A. CLUB]
Social life on the Zone is rather complex. At the apex, of course, are
the Commissioners and their families. The presence of an Envoy
Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States in
Panama City adds another factor to the always vexed question of
precedence, while the maintenance of a military post with a full
regiment, and a marine camp with a battalion does not help to simplify
matters. Social affiliations among those not in the Commission or the
Army set are based with primitive simplicity upon the amount of the
husband’s earnings. One advantage of this system is that it is based
upon perfectly accurate information, for everybody on the Zone works for
the Commission and the payrolls are periodically published. But it jars
the ingenuous outsider to have a woman, apparently without a trace of
snobbery, remark casually of another, “well, we don’t see much of her.
Her husband is in the $2000 class you know”.
[Illustration: Y. M. C. A. CLUB AT GATUN
These clubs are the true centers of the social life of the zone]
Social life is further complicated by the fact that the people of the
Zone came from all parts of the United States, with a few from Europe.
They have no common home associations. When the settlement of the Zone
first began the women were dismally lonely, and the Commission called in
a professional organizer of women’s clubs to get them together. Clubs
were organized from Ancon to Cristobal and federated with Mrs. Goethals
for President and Mrs. Gorgas for Vice-President. Culebra entertained
Gorgona with tea and Tolstoi, and Empire challenged Corozal to an
interchange of views on eugenics over the coffee cups and wafers. In a
recent number of _The Canal Record_, the official paper of the Zone, I
find nearly a page given over to an account of the activities of the
women’s societies and church work. It appears that there were in April,
1913, twenty-five societies of various sorts existing among the women on
the Zone. The Canal Zone Federation of Women’s Clubs had five subsidiary
clubs with a membership of fifty-eight. There were twelve church
organizations with a membership of 239. Nearly 290 women were enrolled
in auxiliaries to men’s organizations. But these organizations were
rapidly breaking up even then and the completion of the Canal will
witness their general disintegration. They served their purpose. Only a
mind that could mix the ideal with the practical could have foreseen
that discussions of the Baconian Cipher, or the philosophy of Nietzsche
might have a bearing on the job of digging a canal, but whoever
conceived the idea was right.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
MARINE POST AT CAMP ELLIOTT
A force of about 500 marines will be kept permanently on the Zone]
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
TOURISTS IN THE CULEBRA CUT]
The same clear foresight that led the Commission to encourage the
establishment of women’s clubs caused the installation of the Y. M. C.
A. on the Isthmus, where it has become perhaps the dominating social
force. With a host of young bachelors employed far away from home there
was need of social meeting places other than the saloons of Panama and
Colon. Many schemes were suggested before it was determined to turn over
the whole organization of social clubs to the governing body of the Y.
M. C. A. There were at the period of the greatest activity on the Zone
seven Y. M. C. A. clubs located at Cristobal, Gatun, Porto Bello,
Gorgona, Empire, Culebra and Corozal. The buildings are spacious, and,
as shown by the illustrations, of pleasing architectural style. On the
first floor are a lobby, reading-room and library, pool and billiard
room, bowling alley, a business-like bar which serves only soft drinks,
a quick lunch counter, and in some cases a barber shop and baths. On the
second floor is always a large assembly-room used for entertainments and
dances. This matter of dancing was at first embarrassing to the Y. M. C.
A., for at home this organization does not encourage the dreamy mazes of
the waltz, and I am quite sure frowns disapprovingly on the swaying
tango and terrible turkey trot. But conditions on the Isthmus were
different and though the organization does not itself give dances, it
permits the use of its halls by other clubs which do. The halls also are
used for moving picture shows, concerts and lectures. The Superintendent
of Club Houses, Mr. A. B. Dickson, acts as a sort of impressario, but
the task of filling dates with desirable attractions is rather a
complicated one 2000 miles away from the lyceum bureaus of New York.
The service of the Y. M. C. A. is not gratuitous. Members pay an annual
fee of $10 each. This, however, does not wholly meet the cost of
maintenance and the deficit is taken care of by the Commission, which
built the club houses at the outset. That the service of the
organization is useful is shown by the fact that Col. Goethals has
recommended the erection of a concrete club house to cost $52,500 in the
permanent town of Balboa.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
LOBBY IN TIVOLI HOTEL]
Social intercourse on the Zone is further impeded by the fact that the
few thousand “gold” employees are scattered over a strip of territory 43
miles long traversed by a railroad which runs but three passenger trains
daily in each direction. Dances are held on alternate Saturday nights at
the Tivoli and Washington Hotels and guests cross from the Atlantic to
the Pacific or vice-versa to attend them, but on these nights a special
train takes the merrymakers home. If, however, a lady living at Culebra
desires to have guests from Cristobal to dinner, she must keep them all
night, while a popular bachelor with half a dozen dinner or party calls
to make needs about three uninterrupted days to cover his list.
Church work, too, has been fostered by the Commission. Twenty-six of the
churches are owned by it, and all but two are on land it owns. In 1912
there were forty churches on the Zone--seven Roman Catholic, thirteen
Episcopal, seven Baptist, two Wesleyan and eight undenominational.
Fifteen chaplains are maintained by the government, apportioned among
the denominations in proportion to their numbers. Much good work is done
by the churches, but one scarcely feels that the church spirit is as
strong as it would be among the same group of people in the States. The
changed order of life, due to the need of deferring to tropical
conditions, has something to do with this. The stroll home from church
at midday is not so pleasant a Sunday function under a glaring tropical
sun. Moreover no one town can support churches of every denomination,
the railroad is at least impartial in that it does not encourage one to
go down the line to church any more than to a dance or the theater.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
ALTAR IN GATUN CATHOLIC CHURCH]
Even as I write the disintegration of this society has begun. On the
tables of the Zone dwellers you find books about South America or
Alaska--the widely separated points at which opportunity for engineering
activity seems to be most promising. Alaska particularly was at the time
engaging the speculative thought of the young engineers in view of the
discussion in Congress of the advisability of building two government
railroads in that territory. The preparation of moving thither the Canal
organization was highly pleasing to the younger men who seemed to think
that working over glacial moraines and running lines over snow fields
would form a pleasing sequel to several years in the tropical jungles
and swamps. You will see on the Isthmus bronzed and swarthy men who are
pointed out to you as “T T’s” which is to say tropical tramps who served
first in the Philippines. Just what appellation will be given those who
go from the tropics to the arctic is yet to be discovered. In the _Canal
Record_ I read of the final dissolution of the Federation of Women’s
Clubs. Stories of the ambitions of individual commissioners for new
employment are appearing in the public prints. Only the pernicious
activity of the slides at Culebra and Cucaracha can much longer delay
the dissolution of the social life that has so pleasingly flourished
under the benevolent despotism of Col. Goethals.
CHAPTER XVIII
LABOR AND THE GOVERNMENT OF THE ZONE
By its provision for the comfort of the unmarried employees the Isthmian
Commission has justified the allegation that it systematically
encourages matrimony among the men. The bachelor employee upon the gold
roll is housed in large barracks which rarely afford him a room to
himself, but ordinarily force upon him one, two or even three “chums.”
The intimacies of chumming are delightful when sought, but apt to be
irksome when involuntary. The bachelor quarters house from twelve to
sixty men, and are wholly made up of sleeping rooms. The broad screened
verandas constitute the only living room or social hall. If that does
not serve the young bachelor’s purpose he has the Y. M. C. A. which is
quite as public. In fact, unless he be one of the few favored with a
room to himself, he must wander off, like a misanthrope, into the heart
of the jungle to meditate in solitude. As hard outdoor work does not
make for misanthropy most of them wander off to the church and get
married.
The unmarried employees take their meals in what are called Commission
Hotels, though these are hotels only in the sense of being great eating
houses. Here men and women on the gold roll are served, for there are
bachelor girls on the Zone and at these hotels special veranda tables
are reserved for them and for such men as retain enough of the frills of
civilization as to prefer wearing their coats at their meals. Meals for
employees cost thirty cents each, or fifty cents for non-employees.
There is some divergence of judgment concerning the excellence of this
food. Col. Roosevelt, while on the Isthmus, evaded his guides, dashed
into a Commission hotel and devoured a thirty-cent meal, pronouncing it
bully and declaring it unapproachable by any Broadway meal at $1.00. The
Colonel sincerely believed that his approach was unheralded, but they do
say on the Zone that his descent was “tipped off” like a raid in the
“Tenderloin,” and that a meal costing the contractors many times thirty
cents was set before him.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
LA BOCA FROM THE CITY]
Undoubtedly one who should order the same variety of dishes in a city
restaurant in the States would have to pay more than fifty cents,
although there are country hotels in which equal variety and excellence
for the price are not unattainable. A typical dinner menu includes soup,
two kinds of meat, four kinds of vegetables, hot rolls or light bread, a
salad, tea, coffee, or cocoa and for dessert pie or ice cream. The
Isthmian appetite for ice cream is a truly tropical wonder. In the
early days of the work the novice on the Isthmus was likely to mistake
an open bowl of quinine on the table for pulverized sugar, but this has
very generally disappeared.
[Illustration: AT LOS ANGOSTURAS
Some Panama rivers flow through dales like those of the Wisconsin]
No money changes hands at the Commission hotels, unless the diner
happens to be a non-employee. Meals are paid for by coupons from books
purchased at the Commissary. By omitting the luncheon, and filling its
place with a little fruit, or a sandwich, the Canal employee can make
his food cost only $18 a month. He has no lodging to pay; clothes are
the cheapest imaginable, for there are no seasons to provide for, nor
any rotations of fashions to be observed; theaters are practically
non-existent and away from Panama City temptation to riotous living are
slight. The Zone worker is the most solvent individual in all industry
and ought to close up a four or five years’ service with a comfortable
nest egg.
The economy and comfort of life on the Canal Zone are mainly due to the
Commissary system which has grown up under the American régime. This is
part of the Subsistence Department, which is divided into two
branches--hotel and commissary. The hotel department not only runs the
Commission hotels already described, but the two large hotels patronized
by tourists--the Tivoli at Ancon and the Washington at Colon. Though a
special rate is made at these two hotels for employees, their prices are
still too high for them to be patronized by any except the most highly
paid workers. Even the pleasure seeker on the Isthmus is likely to
regard their rates as rather exorbitant.
[Illustration: THE WATER FRONT AT COLON
Cocoanut palms are picturesque but beware of the falling nuts]
Their prices, however, are essentially those of the native Panamanian
hotels in the city, and in cleanliness they are vastly superior. The
visitor to Panama, however, who seeks local color or native food need
not expect to find either at the Tivoli. That is a typical resort hotel
which might have been moved down to the Isthmus from the Jersey beaches
or Saratoga Springs. Its only local color resides in its Jamaica
waiters, and as I am assured that they are no less a trial to the
managers than to the guests, criticism would be perhaps ungenerous. As
for native fruits and food, you must go away from the hotel to seek
them. An infrequent papaya appears on the menu, but for the mamei,
mango, sapodilla and other fruits, the guests at the time of my visit
sought the native fruit stores.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
NEGRO QUARTERS AT CRISTOBAL
The Jamaica negroes frequently elect to live in the shacks rather than
the commission barracks]
After all, however, the two big hotels are the least of the tasks
imposed on the Subsistence Department. The string of Commission hotels,
18 in all, serve about 200,000 meals monthly. There are also 17 messes
for European laborers who pay 40 cents per ration of three meals a day.
Sixteen kitchens serve the West India laborers who get three meals for
27 cents. About 100,000 meals of this sort are served monthly. Receipts
and expenditures for the line hotels, messes and kitchens are very
nicely adjusted. The Official Handbook puts receipts at about $105,000 a
month; expenditures, $104,500. The Tivoli Hotel earns a profit, but the
Washington Hotel, being newly built, had not at the time of publication
of this book made a financial report.
As I have noted, the hotels are not open to all sorts and conditions of
men. Those which I have described are established for the use of gold
employees only. Different methods had to be adopted in providing lodging
and eating places for the more than 30,000 silver employees, most of
whom belong to the unskilled labor class. About 25,000 of the silver
employees are West Indians, mainly from Jamaica or the Barbados, though
some French are found. A very few Chinese are employed. In 1906 Engineer
Stevens advertised for 2500 Chinese coolies, and planned to take 15,000
if they offered themselves, but there was no considerable response.
Perhaps the story of the unhappy Chinamen who destroyed themselves
during the French régime rather than live on the Isthmus may have been
told in the Flowery Kingdom and deterred others from coming. But few
Japanese laborers are enrolled, which is the more strange when the part
they took in railroad building in the Pacific northwest is remembered.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
LABOR TRAIN AT ANCON]
In all forty nationalities and eighty-five geographical subdivisions
were noted in the census of 1912. Greenland is missing, but if we amend
the hymn to “From Iceland’s icy mountains to India’s coral strand,” it
will fit the situation. When work was busiest the West Indian laborers
were paid 10 cents an hour, for an eight-hour day, except in the case of
those doing special work who got 16 and 20 cents. The next higher type
of manual labor, largely composed of Spaniards, drew 20 cents. Artisans
received from 16 to 44 cents an hour. In figuring the cost of work it
was the custom of the engineers to reckon the West Indian labor as only
33 per cent as efficient as American labor. That is to say, $3 paid to a
Jamaican produced no greater results than $1 paid to an American.
Reckoned by results therefore, the prices paid for native labor were
high.
[Illustration: NEGRO SLEEPING QUARTERS
All extra clothing etc., is piled on shelf above. The floor is flushed
daily]
Quarters and a Commissary service were of course provided for the silver
employees. Their quarters were as a rule huge barracks, though many of
the natives and West Indians spurn the free quarters provided by the
Commission and make their homes in shacks of their own. This is
particularly the case with those who are married, or living in the free
unions not uncommon among the Jamaica negroes. The visitor who saw first
the trim and really attractive houses and bachelor quarters assigned to
the gold employees could hardly avoid a certain revulsion of opinion as
to the sweetness and light of Isthmian life when he wandered into the
negro quarters across the railroad in front of the Tivoli Hotel at
Ancon, or in some of the back streets of Empire or Gorgona. The best
kept barracks for silver employees were at Cristobal, but even there the
restlessness and independence of the Jamaicans were so great that many
moved across into the frame rookeries of the native town of Colon.
In the crowded negro quarters one evidence of the activities of the
sanitation department was largely missing. No attempt was made to screen
all the barracks and shacks that housed the workers. But the
self-closing garbage can, the oil-sprinkled gutters, the clean pavement
and all the other evidences of the activities of Col. Gorgas’ men were
there. Perhaps the feature of the barracks which most puzzled and amused
visitors to the Zone were the kitchens. Imagine a frame building 300
feet long by 75 feet wide, three stories high with railed balconies at
every story. Perched on the rails of the balustrades, at intervals of 20
feet, and usually facing a door leading into the building are boxes of
corrugated iron about 3 feet high, the top sloping upward like one side
of a roof and the inner side open. These are the kitchens--one to each
family. Within is room for a smoldering fire of soft coal, or charcoal,
and a few pots and frying pans. Here the family meal is prepared, or
heated up if, as is usually the case, the ingredients are obtained at
the Commissary kitchen.
The reader may notice that the gold employees are supplied with food at
a fixed price per meal; the silver employees at so much per ration of
three meals. The reason for this is that it was early discovered that
the laborers were apt to economize by irregularity in eating--seldom
taking more than two meals a day and often limiting themselves to one,
making that one of such prodigious proportions as to unfit them for work
for some hours, after which they went unfed until too weak to work
properly. As the Commission lost by this practice at both ends, the evil
was corrected by making the laborers pay for three meals, whether they
ate them or not--and naturally they did. It is a matter of record that
the quality of the work improved notably after this expedient was
adopted.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
A WORKMEN’S SLEEPING CAR]
The gold messes are principally for the foreign laborers, Italians,
Spaniards and Portuguese, and pains are taken to give them food of the
sort they are accustomed to at home. Spaghetti is consumed by the ton,
as well as rice, garlic, lentils and other vegetables sought by the
people of southern Europe.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
A WORKMEN’S DINING CAR]
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
OLD FRENCH BUCKET DREDGES
Some of these dredges are still in use for wet dredging]
In 1909 the Commission reported with satisfaction that “the rations at
the messes for European laborers have been increased, among the
additions being wine three time a week instead of twice a week”. This
record of accomplishment suggests some account of the way in which the
problem of the liquor traffic was handled on the Zone during the most
active period of construction work and prior to the order abolishing all
liquor selling. The problem was a difficult one, for the Zone was in
effect a government reservation, and under a general law of Congress the
sale of liquor on such reservations is prohibited. But on this
reservation there were at divers times from 34 to 63 licensed saloons.
July 1, 1913, all licenses were canceled and the Zone went “dry”. The
earlier latitude granted to liquor sellers was excused by the
necessities of the case. The Spanish and Italian laborers were
accustomed to have wine with their meals and were not contented without
it. But at the later date the end of the work was in sight. There was no
longer need to secure contented labor at the expense of violating a
national statute. Hence the imposition of a stern prohibition law.
[Illustration: OLD FRENCH BRIDGE AT BAS OBISPO]
That system of regulating the sale of liquor on the Canal Zone is
brimful of anomalies and inconsistencies, but fairly well characterized
by a robust common sense. There is no liquor sold or served at the
Commissary hotels or kitchens, with the result that the Spanish and
Italian laborers to some extent refuse to patronize either, but get
their meals at some cantina where the wine of their country can be had.
There is no bar at the Hotel Tivoli. That tavern being owned by the
United States government and in a government reservation the law is
nominally obeyed. But as the tastes of men are not fixed by law, and
only imperfectly regulated by it, you will find the tables of this
hospitable inn plentifully dotted by comfortable looking bottles.
According to report the hotel authorities “send out” to some mysterious
spot for these supplies as ordered, but I never happened to see the
messenger of Bacchus on his errand and rather suspect that the hotel
cellar contains the cheering spring. At any rate the United States as a
hotel-keeper does not encourage liquor drinking at a bar, though it does
not absolutely prohibit it at table.
[Illustration: THE RELAXATION OF PAY DAY]
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
BAS OBISPO AS THE FRENCH LEFT IT]
The saloons of the Zone, viewed superficially, seemed to be conducted
for the convenience and comfort of the day laboring class--the silver
employees--mainly. The police regulations made any particular
attractiveness other than that supplied by their stock in trade quite
impossible. They could not have chairs or tables--“perpendicular
drinking” was the rigid rule. They could not have cozy corners,
snuggeries, or screens--all drinking must be done at the bar and in full
view of the passers-by. Perhaps these rules discouraged the
saloonkeepers from any attempt to attract the better class of custom. At
any rate the glitter of mirrors and of cut glass was notably absent and
the sheen of mahogany was more apparent in the complexions of the
patrons than on the woodwork of the bar. They were frankly rough,
frontier whisky shops, places that cater to men who want drink rather
than companionship, and who when tired of standing at the bar can get
out. Accordingly most of the saloons were in the day laborer quarters,
and it was seldom indeed that a “gold employee” or salaried man above
the grade of day laborer was seen in one. The saloons paid a high
license tax which was appropriated to the schools of the Zone, and they
were shut sharp at eleven o’clock because, as the chief of police
explained, “we want all the laborers fit and hearty for work when the
morning whistle blows”.
[Illustration: CONVICTS BUILDING A COMMISSION ROAD
The excellence of these roads should be an object lesson to Central
America]
That is the keynote of all law and rule on the Zone--to keep the
employees fit for work. If morals and sobriety are advanced why so much
the better, but they are only by-products of the machine which is set to
grind out so many units of human labor per working day.
Unhappily all the safeguards made and provided on the Zone are missing
in the code by which the saloons of Colon and Panama are regulated--if a
wide-open policy is to be described as regulation. These two towns at
the two ends of the Panama Railroad are, one or the other, within an
hour’s ride of any village on the line. Their saloons are many, varied
and largely disreputable. The more sequestered ones have attached to
them the evils which commonly hang about low drinking places, and the
doors swing hospitably open to the resident of the Zone, whether he be a
Canal worker or a soldier or marine from one of the camps.
The uniformed men are more in evidence than they ought to be--more than
they would be if an erratic and uninformed public sentiment at home had
not led Congress to close the army canteens in which the soldier could
have his beer or light wine amid orderly surroundings. If the good
ladies of the W. C. T. U. who hold the abolition of the army canteen one
of their triumphs could see the surroundings into which the enlisted man
is driven, and know the sort of stuff he is led to drink, they might
doubt the wisdom of their perfected work. But as one after another
Secretaries of War and Generals of the Army have unavailingly pleaded
for a return to the canteen system, it is unlikely that facts presented
by a mere writer will have any effect on the narrow illiberality which
prompted the Congressional action.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
CONSTRUCTION WORK SHOWING CONCRETE CARRIERS AND MOULDS
The buckets containing concrete are controlled from a station in the
steel scaffolding--run out, stopped and emptied at the proper point]
It is a curious fact that in the tropics where one would expect to find
cooling rather than heating beverages as a rule the demand is chiefly
for the “hard stuff.” The walls of the saloons, the floors of the
cantinas, or native drinking places, are covered with bottles or barrels
of whisky, rum, brandy and gin. Only in places frequented by the Spanish
and Italians are the lighter wines often seen. The Jamaica negro is
devoted to the rum of his country, and one sees him continually in the
most unexpected places producing a quart bottle from some mysterious
hiding place in his scanty clothing, and benevolently treating his
crowd. In excess--and that is what he aims at--it makes him quarrelsome
and a very fair share of the 7000 annual arrests on the Zone are due to
the fortuitous combination of the two chief products of Jamaica--rum and
the black. It is doubtful, however, whether the Jamaican could be kept
to his work without his tipple, and it was for that reason that the
unusual expedient of permitting liquor selling on a government
reservation was adopted.
The Commissary branch of the Subsistence Department is a colossal
business run by the government for the good of the dwellers on the
Zone. It gathers together from the ends of the earth everything needful
for these pampered wards of Uncle Sam, and sells its stock practically
at cost price. From pins to pianos, from pigs-knuckles to pâté de foie
gras you can get every article of use or luxury at the Commissary. At
least you can in theory, in fact the statement needs toning down a
little, for you will hear plenty of grumbling on the Zone about the
scanty satisfaction derived from shopping in “that old Commissary.”
[Illustration: HOW THE NATIVES GATHER COCOANUTS]
All the same its activities are amazing. It launders linen at prices
that make the tourist who has to pay the charges of the Tivoli Laundry
envy the employees their privileges. It bakes bread, cake and pies for
the whole 65,000 of the working population, and does it with such nice
calculation that there is never an overstock and the bread is always
fresh. Everything of course is done by machinery. Kneading dough for
bread and mixing cement and gravel to make concrete are merely
co-ordinate tasks in the process of building the Canal and both are
performed in the way to get the best results in the least time.
Everything is done by wholesale, Hamburger steak is much liked on the
Isthmus, so the Commissary has a neat machine which makes 500 pounds of
it in a batch. That reminds me, of a hostess who preferred to make her
own Hamburger steak, and so told her Jamaica cook to mince up a piece of
beef. Being disquieted by the noise of chopping, she returned to the
kitchen to find the cook diligently performing the appointed task with a
hatchet.
[Illustration: _Photo by Elliott_
LOOKING DOWN MIRAFLORES LOCKS]
In the icy depths of the cold storage plant at Cristobal, where the
temperature hovers around 14 degrees, while it is averaging 96 outside,
you walk through long avenues of dressed beef, broad pergolas hung with
frozen chicken, ducks and game, sunken gardens of cabbage, carrots,
cauliflower and other vegetable provender. You come to a spot where a
light flashes fitfully from an orifice which is presently closed as a
man bows his head before it. He straightens up, the light flashes and is
again blotted out. You find, on closer approach, two men testing eggs by
peering through them at an electric light. Betwixt them they gaze thus
into the very soul of this germ of life 30,000 times a day, for thus
many eggs do they handle. Yet the odds are that neither has read the
answer to the riddle, “did the first hen lay the first egg, or the first
egg hatch the first chicken?” Unless relieved by some such philosophical
problem to occupy the mind one might think the egg tester’s job would
savor of monotony.
[Illustration: HOSPITAL AT BOCAS]
Out of the railroad yards at Cristobal at 3:45 every morning starts the
Commissary train, usually of 21 cars, 11 of which are refrigerated. Its
business is to deliver to all the consumers along the 47 miles of Canal
villages and camps the supplies for the day. Nineteen stores, and as
many kitchens, messes and hotels, must be supplied. Ice must be
delivered to each household by eight in the morning. Ice is one of the
things that the employees do not get free, but though nature has no
share in making it, they get it cheaper than our own people, for whom
nature manufactures it gratis and a few men monopolize the supply.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
NEW AMERICAN DOCKS AT CRISTOBAL]
If one is fond of big figures the records of the Commissary Department
furnish them. The bakery for example puts forth over 6,000,000 loaves of
bread, 651,844 rolls and 114,134 pounds of cake annually. Panama is a
clean country. Every tourist exclaims at the multitudinous companies of
native women perpetually washing at the river’s brink and in the
interior I never saw a native hut without quantities of wash spread out
to dry. But the Commissary laundry beats native industry with a record
in one year of 3,581,923 pieces laundered--and it isn’t much of a
climate for “biled” shirts and starched collars either. There is a
really enterprising proposition under consideration for the retention of
this laundry. A ship going west would land all its laundry work at
Cristobal and by the time it had made the passage of the Canal--10
hours--all would be delivered clean at Balboa via the railroad. East
bound ships would send their laundry from Balboa by rail. It is an
amazing climate for ice cream, however, and the Commissary supplied
110,208 gallons of that. Some other annual figures that help to complete
the picture of mere size are butter, 429,267 pounds; eggs, 792,043
dozen; poultry, 560,000 pounds; flour, 320,491 pounds.
[Illustration: OX METHOD OF TRANSPORTATION]
As I said before, the population of the Zone, fed mainly through the
Commissary, numbers about 65,000. When one reads of the quantity of food
needed one wonders at the skill and energy that must have been employed
in our Civil War to keep armies of 300,000 and more in the field.
However, in those days perhaps eggs and ice cream did not figure in the
Commissariat, and we have no statistics as to poultry, though the poet
laureate of Sherman’s army referred feelingly to “how the turkeys
gobbled that our Commissaries found.”
[Illustration: ROAD MAKING BY CONVICTS]
The Commissary is not wholly popular. Native shop keepers, of course,
are against it. For a time Zone employees were permitted to use their
books of coupons for purchases in native stores, the storekeepers
afterwards exchanging them for cash at the Commissary. This practice for
some reason has been ruled out, and the native stores lost a certain
amount of trade by the ruling. Nor are the natives the only discontented
ones.
Americans in Panama, not in the employ of the Isthmian Canal Commission,
are inclined to grumble because they are not permitted to make
purchases at the Commissary. That, however, was a matter of serious
agreement between the United States and the Republic of Panama. When the
United States first announced its purpose of taking over the Zone and
building the Canal, there was joy among the business folks of Panama and
Colon. They saw fat pickings in purveying the necessities of life for a
new population of considerable size. Visions of the return of the flush
times of the French engaged their imaginations. All these pleasurable
anticipations were doused under the wet blanket of the Commissary into
which goes the major part of the spending money of the employees. But
there are Americans on the Zone, other than employees and their
families, and these by a solemn international compact are handed over to
the Panamanian mercies. To buy at the Commissary you must have a coupon
book, and without an employee’s number and brass check no coupon book
will be forthcoming. Of course many evade the rule by borrowing a book
from a friend, but after one has thus evaded the provisions of a treaty,
one usually finds there is nothing special to buy after all. My own
opinion is that for the necessities of life the Commissary is all very
well, but lacks in those superfluities for which every one yearns. The
two governments, by the way, which protected the Panama merchants
against American competition also protected a handful of Panamanians in
their clutch upon certain municipal monopolies. With the completion of
its power house at Gatun the Canal Commission will have a great volume
of power to sell or waste. Wasted it will have to be, for a group of
capitalists control the light and power company in Panama City, and the
United States has agreed not to compete with them.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO BOUQUETTE VALLEY]
[Illustration: COCOANUT PALMS NEAR ANCON]
Salaries on the Zone during the period of the “big job” were much higher
than in the States, but it is probable that upon reorganization they
will be materially reduced for those who remain in permanent service--of
these Col. Goethals reckons that there will be for the Canal alone about
2700. If the Panama Railroad organization should be kept up to its
present strength there will be in all about 7700 men employed. This is
altogether unlikely however. The railroad will no longer have the
construction work and débris of the Canal to carry, and the ships will
take much of its commercial business away. During the construction
period the wages paid were as follows:
Col. Goethals $21,000
Other Commissioners, each 14,000
Clerks $ 75 to $250 monthly
Foremen 75 „ 275 „
Engineers 225 „ 600 „
Draftsmen 100 „ 250 „
Master mechanics 225 „ 275 „
Physicians 150 „ 300 „
Teachers 60 „ 110 „
Policemen 80 „ 107.50 „
The minimum wage of a gold employee is $75 a month; the maximum, except
in the case of heads of departments, $600. The hourly pay in some sample
trades was, blacksmith, 30 to 75 cents; bricklayers, 65 cents;
carpenters, 32 to 65 cents; iron workers, 44 to 70 cents; painters, 32
to 65 cents; plumbers, 32 to 75 cents. In the higher paid trades steam
engineers earned $75 to $200 a month; locomotive engineers from $125 to
$210, and steam shovel engineers $210 to $240.
[Illustration: NATIVE RELIGIOUS PROCESSION AT CHORRERA
The figure of the Savior is faintly shown behind the central crucifix,
riding on a mule]
Some of the hourly rates are said to be nearly double those paid in the
United States, and the workers had the added advantages of free quarters
and the other perquisites of employment heretofore described.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
OPENING THE COCOANUT
The natives cut open the green nuts with swift cuts of their heavy
machetes. A miss would cost a finger]
The Canal Zone is not a democracy. It has no constitution so far as its
residents are concerned. There are no elections and no elected officers.
Naturally, however, it must needs have a government, though the
individual will of Col. Goethals has sufficient authority to override
that government if he chooses to exert it. But for the orderly discharge
of public business there exists the Department of Civil Administration
with Commissioner Maurice H. Thatcher as its chief during the last year
of the constructive work. Gov. Thatcher was appointed in 1909 and
brought his department to a high state of efficiency. This department
has supervision over the posts, revenues and customs, the police and
fire departments, the Division of Public Works, and schools, churches
and the judiciary.
[Illustration: RICE STACKED FOR DRYING]
There were, during the period of greatest activity, 17 post offices on
the Zone. The stamps used are Panama stamps, purchased from the Republic
at 40 per cent of their face value and with the words “Canal Zone”
printed across their face. Stamps to the amount of about $80,000 were
sold annually and the money order business during the active years
exceeded $5,000,000 annually, most of which represented the savings of
the workers.
The Zone police force compels admiration. It is not spectacular, but is
eminently business-like and with the heterogeneous population with which
it has to deal it has no doubt been busy. At the outset President
Roosevelt sent down to command it an old time Rough Rider comrade of
his. In late years a regular army officer has been Chief of Police. At
that period it was a problem. Not only was the population rough and of
mixed antecedents, but many foreign nations were looking on the Isthmus
as an excellent dumping place for their criminals and other undesirable
citizens. It was not quite Botany Bay, but bade fair to rival that
unsavory penal colony. Closer scrutiny of applicants for employment
checked that tendency, and a vigorous enforcement of the criminal law
together with the application of the power to deport undesirables soon
reduced the population to order.
[Illustration: BULLOCK CART IN CHORRERA]
In the early days crimes of violence were common. If one carried money
it was wise to carry a gun as well. Organized bandits used to tear up
the railroad tracks and wantonly destroy property for no reason save to
satisfy a grudge against the Commission. But the organization of the
police force stopped it all. In the cities of Colon and Panama is little
or no public gambling, and the brood of outlaws that follow the goddess
chance are not to be found there. On the Zone is no gambling at all.
Even private poker games, if they become habitual, are broken up by
quiet warnings from the police. It isn’t that there is any great moral
aversion to poker, but men who sit up all night with cards and chips are
not good at the drawing board or with a transit the next day. Everything
on the Zone, from the food in the Commissary to the moral code, is
designed with an eye single to its effect on the working capacity of the
men. It is a fortunate thing that bad morals do not as a rule conduce to
industrial efficiency, else I shudder at what Col. Goethals might be
tempted to do to the Decalogue.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
SUN SETTING IN THE ATLANTIC AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT]
The police force in its latter days was in the command of a regular army
officer. In 1913 it numbered 332 policemen, two inspectors and a chief.
Of the policemen 90 were negroes, all of whom had been in the West India
constabulary or in West Indian regiments of the British army. The white
policemen had all served in the United States army, navy or marine
corps. The men are garbed in khaki, and look more like cavalrymen than
police officers--indeed a stalwart, well-setup body of a high order of
intelligence and excellent carriage. Arrests are numerous, yet not more
so than in an American city of 65,000 people. Of about 150 convicts
nearly all are black and these are employed in the construction of roads
within the Zone. The work of the police is greatly expedited by the
celerity of practice in the courts. That Anglo-Saxon fetish, trial by
jury, is religiously observed, but the juries are of three men instead
of twelve and are held strictly to the consideration of questions of
fact alone. There is a full equipment of civil and criminal courts with
an appellate division, but no appeal lies to the courts of the United
States. There do not seem to be many lawyers in the Zone, hence there is
little litigation--or perhaps because there is little litigation there
are few lawyers. It is always a mooted question whether lawyers are the
cause or the effect of litigation, the bane or the antidote.
Children thrive on the Canal Zone. Nearly every visitor who has had the
time to go into the residence sections of Culebra, Gorgona and other
large Canal villages has exclaimed at the number of children visible and
their uniform good health. Naturally therefore a school system has grown
up of which Americans, who lead the world in public education, may well
be proud. Three thousand pupils are enrolled, and besides a
superintendent and general officials, eighty teachers attend to their
education. The school buildings are planned and equipped according to
the most approved requirements for school hygiene, and are especially
adapted to the tropics--which means that the rooms are open to the air
on at least two sides, and that wide aisles and spaces between the desks
give every child at least twice the air space he would have had in a
northern school.
[Illustration: THE FRUITFUL MANGO TREE]
The children like their elders come in for the beneficence of the
Commission. Free books, free stationery, free medical treatment and free
transportation are provided for all. Prof. Frank A. Gause,
superintendent of the Zone schools, is an Indianian and has taken a
justifiable pride in developing the school system there so that it shall
be on a par with the school of like grades in “the States.” He declares
that so far as the colored schools are concerned they are of a higher
degree of excellence than those in our more northern communities. Native
and West Indian children attend the schools of this class, in which the
teachers are colored men who have graduated in the best West Indian
colleges and who have had ample teaching experience in West Indian
schools.
The curriculum of the Zone schools covers all the grades up to the
eighth, that is the primary and grammar school grades, and a
well-conducted high school as well. Pupils have been prepared for
Harvard, Wellesley, Vassar and the University of Chicago. The white
schools are all taught by American teachers, each of whom must have had
four years’ high school training, two years in either a university or a
normal school and two years of practical teaching experience. These
requirements are obviously higher than those of the average American
city school system. Prof. Gause declares that politics and the
recommendation of politicians have no share in the administration of the
Zone schools, though the efforts of Washington statesmen to place their
relatives on the payroll have been frequent and persistent.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
COMPLETED CANAL NEAR GATUN]
For the native and West Indian children a course in horticulture is
given and school gardens established in which radishes, beans, peas,
okra, papayas, bananas, turnips, cabbages, lettuce, tomatoes, and yams
are cultivated. It is worth noting that considerable success has been
achieved with products of the temperate zone, though especial care was
needed for their cultivation. One garden of three-quarters of an acre
produced vegetables worth $350. There is a tendency among Americans on
the Zone to decry the soil as unfit for any profitable agriculture. A
very excellent report on “The Agricultural Possibilities of the Canal
Zone”, issued by the Department of Agriculture, should effectually still
this sort of talk. To the mere superficial observer it seems incredible
that a soil which produces such a wealth of useless vegetation should be
unable to produce anything useful, and the scientists of the Department
of Agriculture have shown that that paradoxical condition does not
exist. Practically all our northern vegetables and many of our most
desirable fruits can be raised on the Zone according to this report, and
it goes on to say:
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
TRAVELLING CRANES AT MIRAFLORES]
“Opportunities for establishing paying dairy herds appear good, ...
there is unquestionably a good opening for raising both pork and
poultry. Small farming, including the production of vegetables and
choice tropical fruits, such as the avocado, mango, papaya, pineapple,
orange, guava, anona, etc., can be carried on profitably with the
application of intensive methods, coupled with proper care in the
selection of crop varieties and soil. The supply of pineapples,
avocados, and papayas is very much below the demand, notwithstanding the
fact that these fruits are apparently well adapted to a considerable
portion of the Zone. With the introduction of varieties of mangos better
than the seedling types now grown this fruit could be made very much
more popular with the northern population. As an evidence of the good
opportunities for the production of choice fruits not only to supply
local demand, but for export trade, the Island of Taboga in Panama may
be cited. Here upon very steep slopes, including much extremely stony
land, large quantities of delightfully flavored pineapples are grown for
shipment. The mango and avocada (aguacate) are also shipped from this
small island with profit”.
[Illustration: THE REVIEW AT ONE OF THE ROOSEVELT RECEPTIONS]
[Illustration: PACIFIC FLATS LEFT BY RECEDING TIDE
The fall is 18 feet and the receding tide leaves more than a mile thus
bare]
Consideration of the agricultural and industrial possibilities of the
Canal Zone is made desirable, indeed imperative, by the proposition of
the military authorities to abandon the whole territory to the
jungle--to expel from it every human being not employed by the Canal
Commission or the Panama Railroad, or not having business of some sort
in connection with those organizations. This was not in contemplation
in the early days of the Zone. It was planned to invite settlement,
though retaining the actual ownership of the land to the United States.
By way of encouraging such settlement the Isthmian Commission was
authorized to lease to settlers farms not exceeding 50 hectares (125
acres) each, at an annual rental of $3 a hectare. This was not
particularly attractive and the proposition was made less so by limiting
the period of leases to twenty-five years. Moreover the limitation on
the size of the individual farm made cattle farming quite impossible,
and even ordinary farming doubtful, for in 50 hectares the actual area
of good farming land is likely to be small. Although criticism of these
provisions was current, in 1913 nothing was done for their correction
because of the vigor with which the military authorities urged the
entire depopulation of the Zone.
[Illustration: A WHALER AT PEARL ISLAND]
That proposition has not yet come before the American people. It has not
even been debated in Congress, but at the moment of the publication of
this book the Commission is proceeding calmly with its arrangements, as
though the program were definitely fixed. The argument advanced by Col.
Goethals and other military experts is that the Canal is primarily a
military work. That the Canal Zone exists only because of and for the
Canal, and should be so governed as to protect the dams and locks from
any treacherous assault is admitted. The advocates of the depopulation
program insist that with a residence on the Zone refused to any save
those employed by the Commission and subject to its daily control, with
the land grown up once more into an impenetrable jungle so that access
to the Canal can be had only through its two ends, or by the Panama
Railroad--both easily guarded--the Canal will be safe from the dynamiter
hired by some hostile government.
It may be so, but there is another side to the question. The Canal Zone
is an outpost of a high civilization in the tropics. It affords object
lessons to the neighboring republics of Central America in architecture,
sanitation, road building, education, civil government and indeed all
the practical arts that go to make a State comfortable and prosperous.
Without intention to offend any of the neighboring States it may fairly
be said that the Zone, if maintained according to its present standards,
should exercise an influence for good on all of them. It is the little
leaven that may leaven the whole lump.
[Illustration: AN OLD WELL AT CHIRIQUI]
That it can be maintained with its present population is of course
impossible. When the employment, furnished by the construction of the
Canal is finished, the army of engineers and laborers will disintegrate
and scatter to other fields of industry. This process is already begun.
Our government in securing labor from the West India islands assumed
the task of returning the laborers to their homes at the expiration of
their term of service and this is now being done, though not so rapidly
as would have been the case except for the persistent activity of the
slides at Culebra. It has been suggested that gifts of land, instead of
passage money home, would be acceptable to these laborers, not merely
West Indians, but Europeans as well. Thrown open to settlement under
proper conditions the Zone would no doubt attract a certain class of
agriculturists from the States.
[Illustration: A GOOD YIELD OF COCOANUTS]
Undoubtedly there will be a field for skilled agricultural endeavor
there. As I have already noted Col. Goethals estimates the necessary
force for the operation of the Canal at 2700. For the operation of the
Panama Railroad in 1913 five thousand men were required but with the
cessation of Canal work this number would be largely reduced. Probably
6000 men would constitute the working force of both Canal and railroad.
A working force of that number would create a population of about
15,000. There is further the military force to be considered. Col.
Goethals strenuously urged that 25,000 men be kept on the Isthmus
permanently, but the opinion of Congress, toward the period of the
opening of the Canal, seemed to be that about 7000 would be sufficient.
In all probability the latter figure will be the smallest number of men
that will go to make up the military establishment.
[Illustration: CHOLO GIRLS AT THE STREAM]
There is every reason to believe that at Balboa particularly the
shipping interests will create a large and prosperous town, while
already the cities of Panama and Colon, geographically part of the Zone,
though politically independent, have a population of at least 60,000.
When the Canal is once in operation there will be from 75,000 to 100,000
people on the Zone and in the two native cities within it to furnish a
market for the food products that can be raised on that fertile strip of
land. Today the vegetables of the temperate zone are brought 3000 miles
to the Zone dwellers, sometimes in cold storage, but chiefly in cans. As
for those who live in the Panama towns and are denied access to the
Commissary, they get fresh vegetables only from the limited supply
furnished by the few Chinese market gardens. According to the Department
of Agriculture nearly all vegetables of the temperate clime and all
tropical fruits can be grown on the Zone lands. This being the case it
seems a flat affront to civilization and to the intelligent utilization
of natural resources to permit these lands to revert to the jungle, and
force our citizens and soldiers in these tropic lands to go without the
health-giving vegetable food that could easily be raised in the
outskirts of their towns and camps. Of the sufficiency of the market for
the output of all the farms for which the Zone has space and arable soil
there can be no doubt, for to the townspeople, the Canal operatives and
the garrisons there will be added the ships which reach Colon or Balboa
after long voyages and with larders empty of fresh green vegetables.
To the mind not wholly given over to militarism the idea that this
region in which so admirable, so unparalleled a beginning of industrial
development has been made should be now abandoned is intolerable. And it
does not seem at all plausible that our locks and dams and spillways
would be safer in a wilderness patrolled by perfunctory guards than they
would be in a well-settled and thriving community every man in which
would know that his prosperity was wholly dependent upon the peaceful
and uninterrupted operation of the Canal.
Doubtless there will be some discussion before acquiescence is given to
the military proposition that the Canal Zone--as large as the State of
Indiana--shall be allowed to revert to jungle, be given over to the
serpent, the sloth and the jaguar. That would be a sorry anti-climax to
the work of Gorgas in banishing yellow fever and malaria, and of
Goethals in showing how an industrial community could be organized,
housed and fed.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
SHIPPING AT BALBOA DOCKS]
CHAPTER XIX
FORTIFICATIONS; TOLLS; COMMERCE AND QUARANTINE
With the completion of the Canal appeared many problems other than the
engineering ones which had for so many years engrossed public attention.
Some of these problems--like the question whether the Canal should be
fortified or its neutrality guaranteed by international agreement--had
reached a conclusion during the last year of the constructive work. But
the question of Canal tolls, the future management of the Canal Zone and
the broad speculation as to the general effect upon the trade of the
world were still subjects of discussion.
That there should have been any serious opposition to the fortification
of the Canal seems amazing, but the promptitude with which it died out
seems to indicate that, while noisy, it had no very solid foundation in
public sentiment. Indeed it was urged mainly by well-meaning theorists
who condemn upon principle any addition to the already heavy burden
which the need for the national defense has laid upon the shoulders of
the people. That in theory they were right is undeniable. Perhaps the
greatest anomaly of the twentieth century is the proportions of our
preparations for war contrasted with our oratorical protestations of a
desire for peace. But the inconsistencies of the United States are
trivial in comparison with those of other nations, and while the whole
world is armed--nominally for defense, but in a way to encourage
aggressions--it is wise that the United States put bolts on its front
gate. And that in effect is what forts and coast defenses are. They are
not aggressive, and cannot be a menace to any one--either to a foreign
land, as a great navy might conceivably be, or to our people, as a great
standing army might prove. The guns at Toro Point and Naos Island will
never speak, save in ceremonial salute, unless some foreign foe menaces
the Canal which the United States gives freely to the peaceful trade of
the world. But if the menace should be presented, it will be well not
for our nation alone, but for all the peoples of the earth, that we are
prepared to defend the integrity of the strait of which man has dreamed
for more than 400 years, and in the creation of which thousands of
useful lives have been sacrificed.
[Illustration: EXPLAINING IT TO THE BOSS]
Mistaken but well-meaning opponents of fortification have insisted that
it was a violation of our pact with Great Britain, and a breach of
international comity. This, however, is an error. True, in the
Clayton-Bulwer treaty of 1850, both the United States and Great Britain
expressly agreed not to fortify or assume any dominion over any part of
Central America through which a canal might be dug. But that treaty was
expressly abrogated by the Hay-Pauncefote treaty. In its first draft
this latter treaty contained the anti-fortification clause and was
rejected by the United States Senate for that very reason. In its second
draft the treaty omitted the reference to fortifications and was
ratified. Lord Lansdowne, one of the negotiators for the British
government, explicitly said that he thoroughly understood the United
States wished to reserve the right to fortify the Canal.
[Illustration: _Photo by American Press Ass’n_
SPANISH MONASTERY AT PANAMA]
It was so clear that no question of treaty obligations was involved that
the opponents of fortification early dropped that line of argument. The
discussion of the treaty in the Senate silenced them. They fell back
upon the question of expediency. “Why”, they asked, “go to the expense
of building and manning fortifications and maintaining a heavy garrison
on the Zone? Why not, through international agreement, make it neutral
and protect it from seizure or blockade in time of war? Look at Suez”!
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy National Geographic Magazine_
CHOCO INDIAN OF SANBU VALLEY]
This was more plausible. At first glance the questions seem answerable
in only one way. But consideration weakens their force. There is a Latin
copy-book maxim, “_Inter armas silent leges_”--“In time of war the law
is silent”. It is cynically correct. International agreements to
maintain the integrity or neutrality of a territory last only until one
of the parties to the agreement thinks it profitable to break it. It
then becomes the business of all the other parties to enforce the pact,
and it is usually shown that what is everybody’s business is nobody’s
business. Consider a partial record:
[Illustration: THE RISING GENERATION]
The independence of Korea was guaranteed by four Great Powers in 1902.
Inside of two years the Japanese Admiral Uriu violated the independence
of the Korean port of Chemulpo by sinking two Russian cruisers in it,
and shortly thereafter Japan practically annexed the country. None of
the Powers that had “guaranteed” its independence protested.
Austria-Hungary in 1908 annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite the fact
that seven Powers, including Austria-Hungary herself, had fixed the
sovereignty of those provinces in Turkey. The signatory powers grumbled
a little, but that was all. Mr. W. E. Hall, recognized as the greatest
living authority on international law, observes cynically, and
truthfully, that “treaties are only permanently obeyed when they
represent the continued wishes of the contracting parties”.
Prussia once guaranteed the independence of Poland, and in two years
took the leading part in blotting it off the roll of nations.
[Illustration: ANCON HILL, WHERE AMERICANS LIVE IN COMFORT]
Illustrations of the failure of nations to observe the rights of
neutrals are common. Turkey and Korea afford recent illustrations of
nations that have entrusted their national integrity to international
agreements. Nothing remains of Korea’s nationality but a name, and the
Allies are rapidly carving Turkey to bits while the Great Powers that
guaranteed her integrity look on in amazed and impotent alarm. The
United States itself has not been wholly without share in such
high-handed proceedings. In the event of a general war Panama Canal
would be kept neutral just so long as our military and naval power could
defend its neutrality and no longer.
Moreover, we do not want it neutral in a quarrel in which we are
involved. The Canal is dug by our money and in our territory and is part
of our line of defense. We do not propose to permit its passage by an
enemy. That would be strict neutrality indeed, but it would make the
Canal a weakness instead of a defense. Without it our Pacific Coast is
practically safe from European aggression; our Atlantic coast protected
by thousands of miles of ocean from any foe whose naval strength is in
the Pacific. To throw open the Canal to our foes as well as to our
friends would be like supplying the key to the bank vaults to the
cracksmen as well as to the cashier.
[Illustration: _Photo by American Press Ass’n_
GATUN LAKE, SHOWING SMALL FLOATING ISLANDS]
The parallel with the Suez Canal strenuously urged by the advocates of
neutrality does not hold. The waterway between the Mediterranean and the
Red Sea was not dug as a government enterprise. It was a distinctly
commercial enterprise, with its shares listed upon the exchanges and
bought and sold in the open market. By the purchase of a majority of
those shares the ownership of the Canal passed into the hands of the
British government, but all the nations had joined in the international
agreement to protect their individual rights before the British
ownership was effected. Moreover, Great Britain is by no means content
with the safeguards provided by the Constantinople convention, but has
planted her great fortresses at Malta and at Aden, near the ends of the
Canal, and maintains in the Mediterranean a naval force equal to that of
any other two nations. The Caribbean is to be the American
Mediterranean, and the visible and effective power of the United States
in those waters must be equal, probably vastly superior, to that of
England in Europe’s great inland sea.
[Illustration: A SPECTACULAR BLAST]
Nor does the existence of a powerful navy, even the material
multiplication of our present naval force, obviate to any considerable
degree the necessity for powerful forts at either end of the Canal. Our
fleet cannot be anchored during the continuance of a war to any one
fixed point. The navy is essentially an offensive force, its part in the
defense of our country being best performed by keeping the enemy busy
defending his own. Farragut said that the best defense against the
attack of any enemy is the rapid fire of your own guns. Extend this
principle and it appears that the best way to defend our own coasts is
to menace those of the enemy. This principle was not applied in our
recent war with Spain, but we had not the navy then, and diplomatic
considerations further intervened to prevent our employing against
Spain’s sea coast cities such vessels as we had. Should we rely wholly
on the navy to defend our Canal entrances a mere demonstration against
those points would tie up a considerable portion of our floating force,
while an enemy’s main fleet might ravage our thickly populated sea
coasts.
[Illustration: THE FIRST VIEW OF COLON]
Discussion of this question, however, is largely academic, for the
fortification of the Canal has been determined upon, and construction of
the forts is well advanced. There is, however, some disquietude over a
fear, expressed by the late Admiral Evans, that the topography at the
Atlantic terminus of the Canal is such that fortifications, however
great their strength, would not be sufficient to prevent the enemy
holding a position so near the Canal’s mouth as to be able to
concentrate its fire on each ship as it emerged and thus destroy
seriatim any fleet seeking to make the passage of the Canal. The
criticism was a serious one. Even to the civilian mind the inequalities
of a battle in which six or eight battleships can concentrate their
broadside fire on a single ship navigating a narrow and tortuous channel
and able to reply with her bow guns only are sufficiently obvious.
Indeed the criticism was held of sufficient force to be referred to the
General Board of the Navy, which, after due consideration, made a report
of which the following quotations form the substance:
“The General Board believes that the proposed fortifications at the
termini of the Isthmian Canal would be invaluable in assisting the
transfer of a United States fleet from one ocean to the other through
the Canal, in the face of an opposing fleet. The function of the
fortifications in this particular is precisely the same at the Canal
termini as it is at any fortified place from which a fleet may have to
issue in the face of an enemy’s fleet.
[Illustration: A PORCH AT CULEBRA]
“Guns mounted on shore are on an unsinkable and steady platform, and
they can be provided with unlimited protection and accurate
range-finding devices. Guns mounted on board ship are on a sinkable,
unsteady platform, their protection is limited, and range-finding
devices on board ship have a very limited range of accuracy. The shore
gun of equal power has thus a great advantage over the ship gun which is
universally recognized, and this advantage is increased if the former be
mounted on disappearing carriages, as are the seacoast guns of the
United States. The mere statement of these elementary facts is a
sufficient proof of the value of seacoast guns to assist a fleet in
passing out from behind them to engage a waiting hostile fleet outside,
provided the shore guns are mounted in advance of, or abreast, the point
where the ship channel joins the open sea. Even if somewhat retired from
that point they would be useful, but to a less extent.
[Illustration: _Photo by American Press Ass’n_
AVENIDA CENTRALE, PANAMA, NEAR THE STATION]
[Illustration: Copyright, 1913, F. E. Wright.
SWIMMING POOL AT PANAMA
Some say that before the days of the city water supply this pool held
water for protection against fire. Nowadays it is chiefly used for the
aquatic revels of the boys.]
“At the Pacific terminus of the Canal there are outlying islands that
afford sites for fortifications, the usefulness of which in assisting
the egress of a fleet in the face of opposition is universally
admitted, as far as the General Board knows; but there has been
unfavorable criticism of the possibility of fortifications at the
Atlantic end to serve this purpose. The General Board regards these
criticisms as unfounded and believes, on the contrary, that the
conditions at the Atlantic terminus of the Canal are unusually favorable
for the emplacement of guns that would be of assistance to a fleet
issuing in the face of hostile ships.
[Illustration: IN A CHIRIQUI TOWN]
“On both sides of Limon Bay, in which the Canal terminates at the
Atlantic end, there are excellent sites for forts, well advanced on
outlying points. The line joining these sites is 3000 yards in front of
the point where the Canal prism reaches a low-water depth sufficient for
battleships, and Limon Bay from this point outward is wide enough for a
formation of eight ships abreast. The outer end of the most advanced
breakwater proposed is only 600 yards in front of the line joining the
sites for the forts; and as long as ships remain behind the breakwater,
it will afford them a considerable amount of protection from the enemy’s
fire, while they will themselves be able to fire over it. In order to
make his fire effective against the issuing ships the enemy must come
within the effective fire of the fortifications. Under these
circumstances it is impossible to deny the usefulness of fortifications
in assisting the issue of a fleet against opposition. The conditions in
this respect at the Atlantic end of the Canal are incomparably better
than those existing at Sandy Hook, whose forts nobody would dream of
dismantling”.
[Illustration: A MOUNTAIN RIVER IN CHIRIQUI]
Concerning the type of fortifications now building there is little to be
said. The War Department is not as eager for publicity as are certain
other departments of our federal administration. In November, 1912,
Secretary of War Stimson made a formal statement of the general plan of
defense. No change has been made in this plan, and it may be quoted as
representing the general scheme as fixed upon by the War Department and
authorized by Congress:
“The defenses to the Isthmus are divided into two general heads:
“1. A seacoast armament with submarine mines at the termini of the
Canal, for protection against a sea attack and to secure a safe exit for
our fleet in the face of a hostile fleet.
“2. The construction of field works and a mobile force of troops to
protect the locks and assure important utilities against an attack by
land”.
“The seacoast fortifications will include 16-inch, 14-inch and 6-inch
rifles and 12-inch mortars. This armament will be of more powerful and
effective types than that installed in any other locality in the world.
At the Atlantic end of the Canal the armament will be located on both
sides of Limon Bay. At the Pacific end the greater part of the armament
will be located on several small islands, Flamenco, Perico and Naos,
which lie abreast of the terminus. Submarine mines will complete the
seacoast armament and will prevent actual entry into the Canal and
harbors by hostile vessels.
[Illustration: BITING THROUGH A SLIDE: FIVE CUBIC YARDS PER BITE]
“In addition to these fortifications, and the necessary coast artillery
and garrison to man them, the defensive plans provide for the erection
of field works, and for the maintenance at all times on the Panama Canal
Zone of a mobile force consisting of three regiments of infantry, at a
war strength of nearly 2000 men for each regiment, a squadron of
cavalry, and a battalion of field artillery. These latter fortifications
and the mobile garrison are intended to repel any attacks that might be
made by landing parties from an enemy’s fleet against the locks and
other important elements or accessories to the Canal. As an attack of
this character might be coincident with or even precede an actual
declaration of war, it is necessary that a force of the strength above
outlined should be maintained on the Canal Zone at all times. This
mobile garrison will furnish the necessary police force to protect the
Zone and preserve order within its limits in time of peace. Congress has
made the initial appropriations for the construction of these
fortifications, and they are now under construction. A portion of the
mobile garrison is also on the Isthmus, and the remainder will be sent
there as soon as provision is made for its being housed”.
It is to be noted that these plans contemplate only the garrisoning of
the Isthmus in time of peace. The department has steadfastly refused,
even in response to congressional inquiry, to make public its plans for
action in war time. The only hint offered on the subject is the estimate
of Col. Goethals that 25,000 men would be needed there in such a
contingency and his urgency that such a garrison be maintained on the
Zone at all times.
[Illustration: COMMISSARY BUILDING AND FRONT STREET, COLON]
The most vulnerable point of the Canal is of course the locks. The
destruction or interruption of the electrical machinery which operates
the great gates would put the entire Canal out of commission. If in war
time it should be vitally necessary to shift our Atlantic fleet to the
Pacific, or vice versa, the enemy could effectively check that operation
by a bomb dropped on the lock machinery at Gatun, Pedro Miguel or
Miraflores. It is, however, the universal opinion of the military
experts that this danger is guarded against to the utmost extent
demanded by extraordinary prudence. Against the miraculous, such as the
presence of an aeroplane with an operator so skilled as to drop bombs
upon a target of less than 40 feet square, no defense could fully
prevail. The lock gates themselves are necessarily exposed and an injury
to them would as effectually put the lock out of commission as would the
wrecking of the controlling machinery.
Col. Goethals has repeatedly declared his belief that the construction
of the locks is sufficiently massive to withstand any ordinary assaults
with explosives. No one man could carry and place secretly enough
dynamite to wreck or even seriously impair the immediate usefulness of
the locks. Even in time of peace they will be continually guarded and
patroled, while in time of war they will naturally be protected from
enemies on every side and even in the air above. The locks are not out
of range of a fleet in Limon Bay and a very few 13-inch naval shells
would put them out of commission. But for that very reason we are
building forts at Toro Point and its neighborhood to keep hostile fleets
out of Limon Bay, and the United States navy, which has usually given a
good account of itself in time of war, will be further charged with this
duty and will no doubt duly discharge it.
That the locks make the Canal more vulnerable than a sea-level canal
would have been is doubtless true. The fact only adds to the argument in
behalf of defending it by powerful forts and an adequate navy.
[Illustration: PEDRO MIGUEL LOCKS
The deep arched recesses are provided that the gates may fold flush with
the walls]
General Weaver, U. S. A., raised the only serious question as to the
sufficiency of the defenses on the Pacific side in his testimony before
the House Committee on Appropriations:
“My views are entirely in harmony with those expressed by Col. Goethals.
I think that the defenses are wholly adequate. The only question I have
noted raised as to the adequacy of the defense has been as to whether
guns would not be mounted by an enemy on Taboga Island, and as to
whether an enemy’s ships could not stand behind Taboga Island, and as to
whether these land guns and naval guns could not from there control the
water area in front of the Pacific terminus? The new type of mortars
that the Ordnance Department is making for the fortifications at Panama
will have a range of 20,000 yards. They will cover the water well over
beyond Taboga Island, and have under fire all of Taboga Island and the
water for a considerable distance beyond the outermost shore lines of
Taboga Island. It is about 12,000 yards from the fortifications at the
Canal terminus to Taboga Island. The mortars will reach 8000 yards
beyond Taboga. The 16-inch gun on Perico will have a range of 20,000
yards. The 14-inch guns on Flamenco and Naos Islands will have ranges of
18,400 yards. The 6-inch guns on Naos Island and on the mainland have a
range of 6000 yards, and are well placed to oppose any attempt at
landing on the lands on which the fortifications are located.
“_Mr. Sherley._--‘So far you have spoken only of the Pacific side. Now,
what have you to say about the defense on the Atlantic side’?
“_Gen. Weaver._--‘On the Atlantic side the defense is, in my opinion,
equally adequate. At Fort Randolph, on Margarita Island, there are
eight mortars of the new type, two 14-inch guns and two 6-inch guns.
That armament will protect the Margarita Island side of the entrance and
it also controls the waters to the south. On the Toro Point side at Fort
Sherman we have eight mortars, two 14-inch guns, and two 6-inch guns.
There are in addition two 6-inch guns provided at Manzanillo Point, city
of Colon. In my opinion this armament is entirely adequate for the
defense of the Atlantic side’”.
It is apparent, therefore, that the unfortified Island of Taboga is the
one questionable point in our Pacific line of defense. It is wholly
probable that steps will be taken to erect such defenses as will make
the seizure of this island impracticable to any enemy.
[Illustration: DETAIL CONSTRUCTION OF A LOCK
The great tube, later covered by concrete, carries the water for filling
the chamber]
Plans for the landward defenses of the coast forts had not been
determined upon at the time of publication of this book. Necessary no
doubt from a strictly military point of view, they seem to the civilian
mind rather superfluous in view of the character of the countryside
along the borders of the Zone. The general who would undertake to lead
an army through the jungle would encounter a natural foe such as armed
forces have never had to overcome, and his invading column would hardly
emerge upon the Zone in fit condition to give battle to any considerable
army of occupation.
However, should an enemy once effect a landing at any point within
striking distance of Panama or Colon, say on the Chorrera coast, or at
Nombre de Dios or Porto Bello, some defensive works would be needed to
prevent their taking the coast forts in the rear. Such works are being
planned and an extensive permanent camp is to be built at Miraflores, at
which point the Canal can be readily crossed--there are to be no
permanent bridges--and smaller posts at Margarita Island, Toro Point
and Culebra Island. To man the actual seacoast forts there will be 12
companies of coast artillery of 109 men each; while distributed in the
army camps will be, according to present estimates, three regiments of
infantry, a squadron of cavalry and a battalion of field artillery,
making in all rather more than 8000 men.
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy National Geographic Magazine_
A GROUP OF GUYAMI GIRLS]
The probable influence of the Panama Canal on commerce, on trade routes,
on the commercial supremacy of this or that country, on the development
of hitherto dormant lands is a question that opens an endless variety of
speculations. Discussion of it requires so broad a knowledge of
international affairs as to be almost cosmic, a foresight so gifted as
to be prophetic. A century from now the fullest results of the Canal’s
completion will not have been fully attained. This creation of a new
waterway where a rocky barrier stood from the infinite past in the
pathway of commerce will make great cities where hamlets now sit in
somnolence, and perhaps reduce to insignificance some of the present
considerable ports of the world.
Certain very common misbeliefs may be corrected with merely a word or
two of explanation. Nothing is more common than to look upon all South
America as a territory to be vastly benefited by the Canal, and brought
by it nearer to our United States markets. A moment’s thought will show
the error of this belief. When we speak of South America we think first
of all of the rich eastern coast, of the cities of Rio de Janeiro,
Montevideo and Buenos Ayres. But it is not to this section that the
greatest advantage will come from the Canal. Vessels from our Pacific
coast can indeed carry the timber of Puget Sound, the fish of Alaska and
the Columbia River, the fruits of California thither more cheaply than
now, but that is but a slight fraction of their trade. Nor are Brazil
and the Argentine participators in Oriental trade to any great extent,
though the Canal may make them so. The western coast of South America is
chiefly affected by the Canal, and that to a degree rigidly limited by
the distance of the point considered from the Straits of Magellan, and
the size of the Canal tolls imposed.
[Illustration: A ZONE SIGN OF CIVILIZATION]
Nor will the Suez Canal be an abandoned waterway after our own cut at
Panama is completed. It will, indeed, be not surprising to see the Suez
Canal tonnage increase, for trade breeds trade, and the Panama Canal
will be a stimulant as well as a competitor. To all of British India and
Southern China the distance from Liverpool via Suez is less than via
Panama, and to Melbourne, Sidney and other Australian ports the saving
in distance via Panama is less than 2000 miles. The Suez Canal, it is
to be remembered, is owned by Great Britain and a very slight concession
in rates will be all that is needed to keep British merchant vessels to
their long accustomed routes. We have had a harder task in digging our
Canal than the French had at Suez, but we need cherish no delusive idea
that we are going to put the earlier waterway out of business.
[Illustration: PART OF THE COMPLETED CANAL]
The really great material advantage which the United States is to derive
from this monumental national undertaking will come from the all-water
connection between our own Atlantic and Pacific coasts. A ship going
from New York to San Francisco via the Straits of Magellan traverses
14,000 miles of sea--some of it the very most turbulent of all King
Neptune’s tossing domain. By Panama the same ship will have but 5000
miles to cover. The amazing thing is that ships are going around the
Horn, or at least through the Straits, but the high rates on
transcontinental railroads make even that protracted voyage profitable.
What the Canal will do to transcontinental rates is a matter that is
giving some railroad managers deep concern. It was in fact a
consideration which led to prolonged and obstinate opposition to the
building of any canal at all. Water carriage between the two coasts has
long been a bogey to the railroad managers. When coastwise steamships on
the Atlantic and Pacific with the Panama Railroad for a connecting link
offered some competition, the five transcontinental railways pooled
together and, securing control of the Pacific Mail Steamship line
operating between San Francisco and Panama, used it to cripple all
competition. For a time there was danger that the methods then employed
might be adopted to destroy the usefulness of the Panama Canal, and it
was to guard against this that Congress adopted the law denying the use
of the Canal to vessels owned by railroad companies.
[Illustration: HIS MORNING TUB]
At the time of its passage this law created much discussion. The reason
for it was widely misunderstood. Its first effect was the canceling of
several orders for ships placed by railroad companies with shipbuilders
in anticipation of the Canal’s opening, and the public naturally cried
out against a measure which seemed to interpose an obstacle to the
reappearance of the American flag on the high seas. But the law was bred
of bitter experience. In bygone days it was discovered that both time
and money could be saved on shipments from California to New York or
other Atlantic seaports by sending them to Panama by water, across the
Isthmus by rail, and then by water from Colon to their destination.
This route grew in favor until the transcontinental railroads intervened
to check its further development. Getting control of the Pacific Mail
line of steamers from San Francisco to Panama, they first put their
rates so low as to drive all competing ships from the route. Of course
they lost money, but the loss was apportioned among the companies
forming the pool, and when the competing concerns had been ruined or
driven out of business, the rates were put up again and the losses that
had been incurred were speedily recouped. Once the complete monopoly on
the Pacific had been secured, every effort was made to discourage
shipments by that route. The ships passed Los Angeles, the greatest
fruit port in the country, without a call, but touched at innumerable
little mud villages in Central America so as to make the time of through
shipments intolerable. They often sailed with half a cargo--refusing to
take freight that lay at their docks on the plea that all their cargo
space was disposed of. It was--to the railroads who afterward gathered
up the rejected freight and shipped it east over their own lines at
prices to suit themselves.
[Illustration: NATIVE GIRL, CHORRERA PROVINCE]
[Illustration: NATIVE BOY, CHORRERA PROVINCE]
Taught wisdom by these tactics--against which they had unavailingly
employed all the expedients of law and of coöperative competition--the
shippers of California appealed to Congress to act wisely lest the
Panama Canal as a waterway for all and a regulator of transcontinental
freight rates be throttled by the railroads. They pointed out that the
roads might in combination maintain one line of ships between New York
and San Francisco which would make rates so low that no other line could
meet them and live. Doubtless such a line would lose money, but the
loss, divided among the conspiring roads, would be but a flea bite to
each, and would be more than recouped by the higher rail rates they
might charge. In response to this appeal Congress enacted the law
denying railroads the right to maintain lines of water carriage on what
would be normally competitive routes. The statute though planned
primarily for the maintenance of the highest usefulness of the Panama
Canal affects other routes, notably Long Island Sound. It is denounced
by the railroads and has doubtless checked to some extent American
shipbuilding, but it is nevertheless the only apparent weapon against a
very real and harmful device in the railroads’ efforts to maintain high
rates.
[Illustration: PARK AT DAVID]
The question of the tolls to be charged for passage through the Canal is
one that has evoked a somewhat acrimonious discussion, the end of which
is not yet. About the amount of the toll there was little dispute. It
was determined by taking the cost of maintenance of the Canal, which is
estimated at about $4,000,000 annually, and the interest on its cost,
about $10,000,000 a year, and comparing the total with the amount of
tonnage which might reasonably be expected to pass through annually.
Prof. Emory R. Johnson, the government expert upon whose figures are
based all estimates concerning canal revenues, fixed the probable
tonnage of the Canal for the first year at 10,500,000 tons, with an
increase at the end of the first decade of operation to 17,000,000, and
at the end of the second decade to 27,000,000 tons. The annual expenses
of the Canal, including interest, approximates $14,000,000, and Congress
has accordingly fixed the tolls at $1.20 a ton for freight and $1.50 per
passenger. It is anticipated that these figures will cause a deficit in
the first two or three years of operation, but that the growth of
commerce through the Canal will speedily make it up.
[Illustration: MAIN STREET, CHORRERA]
[Illustration: A PLACID BACK WATER IN CHIRIQUI]
In legislating upon the question of tolls Congress opened an
international question which has been fiercely debated and which remains
a subject of diplomatic negotiation between our State Department and the
British Foreign Office. This was done by the section of the law which
granted to American-built ships engaged in the coasting trade the right
to use the Canal without the payment of any tolls whatsoever. At the
time of its appearance in Congress this proposition attracted little
attention and evoked no discussion. It seemed to be a perfectly obvious
and entirely justifiable employment of the Canal for the encouragement
of American shipping. The United States had bought the territory through
which the Canal extended and was paying every dollar of the cost of the
great work. What could be more natural than that it should concede to
American shipping owners, who had borne their share of the taxation
which the cost of the Canal necessitated, the right of free passage
through it?
The concession seemed the more obvious and proper because the privilege
of free passage was limited to vessels in the coastwise trade. Under our
navigation laws maritime trade between ports in the United States is
confined to ships built in American shipyards. This regulation is
clearly intended to confer upon the United States a monopoly of the
building of coastwise ships, and the subsequent exemption of coastwise
ships from Panama Canal tolls was a further benefaction to this
monopoly. As a matter of fact, our coastwise trade was at the moment
passing into monopolistic control, and the wisdom of making so
prodigious a gift to a monopolistic combination might have justly been
questioned. But the strictly business features of the Canal have always
been decorated with more or less sentimental declamation about
reëstablishing the American flag on the high seas, and it was to
contribute to the latter desirable end that the tolls were to be
remitted. It seemed to occur to no one that the ships thus favored were
either owned by railroad companies and used largely to stifle
competition or by a somewhat notorious organizer of trusts whose
ambition was to control water transportation from Maine to the Mexico
border, and who was checked in the attainment of his aim by a sentence
to the Federal penitentiary. It is not only in war time that the flag is
waved most enthusiastically by men who only want the bounty that goes
with it.
Nobody, however, at the time of the passage of the act regulating tolls
thought it had any particular international significance. Its signature
by the President was taken as a matter of course and it was not until
some time afterward that the Ambassador of Great Britain presented his
country’s claim that the exemption clause was in violation of the
Hay-Pauncefote treaty. The section of that treaty which it is claimed is
violated reads thus:
“The Canal shall be free and open to the vessels of commerce and of war
of all nations observing these rules on terms of entire equality, so
that there shall be no discrimination against any such nation, or its
citizens or subjects, in respect of the conditions or changes of
traffic”.
The outcry against the exemption clause soon became very vociferous.
Perhaps the Canadian railroads or some of their officials may have been
instrumental in this, seeing a possible profit in running ships from
Montreal or Quebec to Vancouver or Victoria, touching at various United
States ports en route. Such a voyage would not constitute a “coastwise
passage” under our laws, and foreign vessels might engage in such
traffic. But they saw that the exemption in tolls by which a United
States vessel of 12,000 tons would escape canal tolls amounting to
$15,000 would put them at a serious disadvantage. Hence they appealed to
Great Britain and the protest followed. Whether affected by the vigorous
colonial protest or not, the British government urges that the United
States will very properly adjust its tolls to meet the needs of the
Canal for revenue, and that if the coastwise shipping be exempted there
will be a loss of some millions of dollars in revenue which will compel
the imposition of higher tolls on other shipping. It is urged also on
behalf of the protestants that the word “coastwise” is capable of
various constructions and that a vessel plying between New York and Los
Angeles might be held not to have sacrificed her coastwise register if
she continued her voyage to Yokohama or Hong Kong.
[Illustration: GATUN LAKE. FLOATING ISLANDS MASSED AGAINST TRESTLE]
American public men and the American press are radically divided on the
question. A majority, perhaps, are inclined to thrust it aside with a
mere declaration of our power in the matter. “We built the Canal and
paid for it”, they say, “and our ships have the same rights in it that
they have in the Hudson River or the canal at the Soo. Besides the
British cannot engage in our coasting trade anyway, and what we do to
help our coastwise ships concerns no one but us”. Which seems a pretty
fair and reasonable statement of the case until the opponents of the
exemption clause put in their rejoinder. “Read the treaty”, they say.
“It is perfectly clear in its agreement that the United States should
not do this thing it now proposes to do. Treaties are, by the
Constitution, the supreme law of the land. To violate one is to violate
our national honor. It would be disgraceful to let the word go out to
all the world that the United States entered into sacred obligations by
treaty and repudiated them the moment their fulfilment proved galling.
The protected shipyards, the already subsidized coastwise steamship
companies, are asking for more gratuities at the cost of our national
honor. What is the use of reëstablishing on the high seas a flag which
all peoples may point out as the emblem of a dishonorable state”?
[Illustration: GUIDE WALL AT MIRAFLORES
This picture shows method of lock construction. The space within these
two walls will be filled with dirt and cement. The ground on either side
will be inundated, forming a small lake through which the Canal passes.]
So rests the argument. The advocates of the remission of tolls to the
coastwise ships of the United States have the best of the position,
since their contention is already enacted into law, but the opposing
forces are vigorously urging the repeal of the law. Congress will of
course be the final arbiter, and as the Canal cannot be opened to
commerce before 1915 there is ample time for deliberation and just
judgment. A phase of the problem which I do not recall having seen
discussed arises out of the literal acceptance of the language of the
treaty as bearing upon the use of the Canal in war time. It declares
that the Canal “shall be free and open to the vessels of commerce and of
war of all nations ... on terms of entire equality”, and while it goes
on to prescribe the rules to be followed in war time it nowhere declares
the right of the United States to debar to the warships of a hostile
nation the privilege of passing through the Canal. Under the strictest
construction of the language of the treaty the refusal of the United
States to permit a German or a Japanese fleet to pass through, even
though that nation was at war with us, would be a violation of the
treaty which would justify English interference to enforce the opening
of the Canal--which of course would be war. No such contingency could
possibly arise, nor any such construction be put upon the language of
the treaty by any reasonable and responsible party. Yet it is scarcely
a more forced construction than the one applied in order to make it
appear that we may not free our own ships in purely domestic trade from
canal tolls.
[Illustration: POLING OVER THE SHALLOWS]
The fundamental principle controlling the amount of the tolls is to fix
them at such a figure as to minimize the competition of Suez. Commerce
proceeds by the cheapest route. Some slight advantage may accrue to the
Panama route if the government can make such contracts with American
mines as to be able to furnish coal at the Isthmus at a price materially
less than is charged at Suez. The estimates, supplied by Prof. Johnson,
of probable commerce have been based on a price for coal at Cristobal or
Colon of $5 a ton and at Balboa of $5.50 a ton. At the time the prices
for coal at Port Said on the Suez Canal were from $6.20 to $6.32 a ton.
This, plus cheaper tolls, will give Panama a great advantage over Suez.
[Illustration: _Photo by American Press Association_
THE SPILLWAY ALMOST COMPLETE.
The scaffolding will be removed and all towers built to height of those
on left]
The first immediate and direct profit accruing to the people of the
United States from the Canal will come from the quick, short and cheap
communication it will afford between the eastern and western coasts of
the United States. People who think of passenger schedules when they
speak of communication between distant cities will doubtless be
surprised to learn that on freight an average of two weeks will be saved
by the Canal route between New York and San Francisco. The saving in
money, even should the railroads materially reduce their present
transcontinental rates, will be even more striking. Even now for many
classes of freights there is a profit in shipping by way of the Straits
of Magellan--a distance of 13,135 miles. By Panama the distance between
New York and San Francisco is but 5262 miles, a saving of 7873 miles or
about the distance across the Atlantic and back. From New Orleans to San
Francisco will be but 4683 miles. Today there is little or no water
communication between the two cities and their tributary territory. At
least one month’s steaming will be saved by 12-knot vessels going
through the Panama Canal over those making the voyage by way of the
Straits of Magellan. A general idea of the saving in distance between
points likely to be affected by the Canal is given by the table prepared
by Hon. John Barrett, Director General of the Pan-American Union and
published on page 384.
[Illustration: SAN BLAS LUGGER IN PORT]
[Illustration: _Photo by Brown Bros._
THE BEGINNING OF A SLIDE
The great crack has opened in the side of a road; note house in the
distance about to go]
The Pacific coasts both of the United States and of South and Central
America will be quickened into new life when the stream of commerce
begins to flow through the new channel at Panama. It may be wise to lay
emphasis at this point upon the fact that so far as industrial and
commercial life on our own Pacific coast is concerned it needs little
quickening, as the march to civic greatness of those communities has
been unparalleled. But even that magnificent advance has been impeded
and harassed by the difficulty of communication with the markets of the
Atlantic coast. The struggles of the Pacific coast planters and
lumbermen to break the bondage imposed upon them by the railroads have
been fairly frantic, and their uniform failure pathetic. Perhaps the
railroad managers have demanded no more than a rightful care for the
interests of their stockholders warranted. This is no place to argue the
railroad rate question. But from the shipper’s point of view the demands
have been so intolerable that every expedient for resisting them has
been tried and failed. Even now there is profit to a corporation--and to
the shippers that patronize it--in carrying goods from San Francisco to
Hawaii, thence to Tehuantepec and across that Isthmus to the Gulf and
thence again to New York in competition with the direct railroad lines.
If freight can be thus handled profitably, with two changes from ship to
car and vice versa, it is easy to see how vastly beneath the charges of
the railroads will be the all-water route between New York and San
Francisco. It is little exaggeration to say that for commercial purposes
all the Pacific seaboard will be brought as near New York and European
markets as Chicago is today. The forward impetus given by this to the
commercial interests of the Pacific baffles computation.
[Illustration: _Photo by Brown Bros._
“MAKING THE DIRT FLY”]
But it is Latin America that has reason to look forward with the utmost
avidity to the results that will follow the opening of the Canal. For
the people of that little developed and still mysterious coast line
reaching from the United States-Mexico boundary, as far south at least
as Valparaiso, the United States has prepared a gift of incalculable
richness. Our share in the benefit will come in increased trade, if our
merchants seize upon the opportunity offered.
[Illustration: THE HAPPY CHILDREN OF THE ZONE]
From Liverpool to Valparaiso today is 8747 miles and from New York 8380.
But when the ships go through the Canal the English vessels will save
little. For them the run will be reduced to 7207 miles, while from New
York the distance will be cut to 4633. With such a handicap in their
favor New York shippers should control the commerce of Pacific South
America north of Valparaiso. Guayaquil, in Ecuador, will be but 2232
miles from New Orleans; it has been 10,631. Callao, with all Peru at its
back, will be 3363 miles from New York, 2784 from New Orleans. In every
instance the saving of distance by the Panama route is more to the
advantage of the United States than of Great Britain. Today the lion’s
share of the commerce of the South American countries goes to England or
to Germany.
DISTANCE SAVED BY THE PANAMA CUTOFF
COMPARATIVE DISTANCES (IN NAUTICAL MILES) IN THE WORLD’S SEA TRAFFIC AND
DIFFERENCE IN DISTANCES VIA PANAMA CANAL AND OTHER PRINCIPAL ROUTES
=From=
/----------------------^---------------------\
=============+==========+=======+=======+=======+=======+=======+=====
| | New | New | Liver-| | |Pana-
=To= | =Via= | York |Orleans| pool |Hamburg| Suez | ma
-------------+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----
Seattle |{Magellan |13,953 |14,369 |14,320 |14,701 |15,397 | ...
|{Panama | 6,080 | 5,501 | 8,654 | 9,173 |10,447 |4,063
=Distance| saved= |=7,873=|=8,868=|=5,666=|=5,528=|=4,950=| ...
-------------+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----
San Francisco|{Magellan |13,135 |13,551 |13,502 |13,883 |14,579 | ...
|{Panama | 5,262 | 4,683 | 7,836 | 8,355 | 9,629 |3,245
=Distance| saved= |=7,873=|=8,868=|=5,666=|=5,528=|=4,950=| ...
-------------+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----
Honolulu |{Magellan |13,312 |13,728 |13,679 |14,060 |14,756 | ...
|{Panama | 6,702 | 6,123 | 9,276 | 9,795 |11,069 |4,685
=Distance| saved= |=6,610=|=7,605=|=4,403=|=4,265=|=3,687=| ...
-------------+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----
Guayaquil |{Magellan |10,215 |10,631 |10,582 |10,963 |11,659 | ...
|{Panama | 2,810 | 2,231 | 5,384 | 5,903 | 9,192 | 793
=Distance| saved= |=7,405=|=8,400=|=5,198=|=5,060=|=2,467=| ...
-------------+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----
Callao |{Magellan | 9,613 |10,029 | 9,980 |10,361 |11,057 | ...
|{Panama | 3,363 | 2,784 | 5,937 | 6,456 | 7,730 |1,346
=Distance| saved= |=6,250=|=7,245=|=4,043=|=3,905=|=3,327=| ...
-------------+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----
Valparaiso |{Magellan | 8,380 | 8,796 | 8,747 | 9,128 | 9,824 | ...
|{Panama | 4,633 | 4,054 | 7,207 | 7,726 | 9,000 |2,616
=Distance| saved= |=3,747=|=4,742=|=1,540=|=1,402=| =824=| ...
-------------+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----
Wellington |{Magellan |11,344 |11,760 | ... |13,353 | 9,694 | ...
|{Suez | ... | ... |12,989 | ... | ... | ...
|{Panama | 8,857 | 8,272 |11,425 |11,944 | 9,205 |6,834
=Distance| saved= |=2,493=|=3,488=|=1,564=|=1,409=| =489=| ...
-------------+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----
Melbourne |{Cape | | | | | |
|{Good Hope|13,162 |14,095 | ... |11,845 | 8,186 | ...
|{Suez | ... | ... |11,654 | ... | ... | ...
|{Panama |10,392 | 9,813 |12,966 |13,452 |10,713 |8,342
=Distance| saved= |=2,770=|=4,282=|=1,312=|=1,607=|=2,527=| ...
| | | | =[1]= | =[1]= | =[1]= |
-------------+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----
Manila |{Suez |11,589 |12,943 | 9,701 | 9,892 | 6,233 | ...
|{Panama |11,548 |10,969 |14,122 |14,608 |11,869 |9,370
=Distance| saved= | =41=|=1,974=|=4,421=|=4,716=|=5,636=| ...
| | | | =[1]= | =[1]= | =[1]= |
-------------+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----
Hongkong |{Suez |11,673 |13,031 | 9,785 | 9,976 | 6,317 | ...
|{Panama |11,691 |11,112 |13,957 |14,443 |11,704 |9,173
=Distance| saved= | =18=|=1,919=|=4,172=|=4,467=|=5,387=| ...
| | | | =[1]= | =[1]= | =[1]= |
-------------+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----
Yokohama |{Suez |13,566 |14,924 |11,678 |11,869 | 8,210 | ...
|{Panama | 9,798 | 9,219 |12,372 |13,858 |11,119 |7,660
=Distance| saved= |=3,768=|=5,705=| =694=|=1,989=|=2,909=| ...
| | | | =[1]= | =[1]= | =[1]= |
-------------+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----
Panama | | 2,017 | 1,438 | 4,591 | 5,110 | 6,387 | ...
-------------+----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----
See also map on page 385
=[1] Distance saved in these cases is via Suez or Cape of Good Hope.=
North of the Canal are the Central American countries of Costa Rica,
Nicaragua, Honduras, Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico. On their Gulf
coasts harbors are infrequent and poor, but on the Pacific plentiful.
Their territory is as yet little developed, but with few manufacturers
of their own they offer a still undeveloped market for ours. In all, the
twelve Latin-American countries bordering on the Pacific have an area of
over 2,500,000 square miles, or about that of the United States
exclusive of Alaska and its insular possessions. They have a population
of 37,000,000 and their foreign trade is estimated at $740,000,000. In
this trade the United States is at the present time a sharer to the
extent of $277,000,000 or about 37 per cent. With the Canal in operation
it is believed that the total commerce will be doubled and the share of
the United States raised to 50 per cent.
[Illustration: THE PANAMA CUT OFF
THIS MAP SHOULD BE STUDIED IN CONNECTION WITH THE TABLE OF COMPARATIVE
DISTANCES ON PAGE 384]
However, it is the great Australasian and Asiatic markets, now scarcely
touched about the outskirts, to which the Canal will give the readiest
access. Here other nations will profit equally with ours unless our
merchants show a greater energy in the pursuit of foreign trade than
they have of late years. Time was that the old shipping merchants of
Boston, Philadelphia and New York asked odds of no man nor of any
nation, but had their own ships plying in the waters of all the world,
with captains who were at once navigators and traders--equally alert to
avoid a typhoon and to secure a profitable cargo or charter. But that
sort of foreign trade is now vanished with the adventurous spirits who
pursued it. Unless conditions governing the American merchant marine
materially change within the next two years--of which there seems today
no likelihood--it will be England and Germany with their existing lines
of ships that will chiefly benefit by the United States $400,000,000
gift to the commerce of the world.
Curiously enough New York, or for that matter any North Atlantic
seaport of the United States, is in a sort a way station for ships from
Europe to North Asiatic ports. In navigation the straight course is not
always the shortest course, for the very simple reason that the equator
is the longest way around the world. On account of the curvature of the
earth’s surface a vessel from Liverpool to Hamburg to the Panama Canal
by following the great circle route can make New York a stopping-place
by adding only one day’s steaming to the voyage. On the other hand a
vessel en route from Panama to Yokohama can touch at San Diego and San
Francisco with only two days’ extra steaming. These facts make for the
advantage of the shipper by adding to the vigor of competition for
cargoes, but they add to the fierceness of the rivalry which the
American ship owner will have to meet and for which the kindly
government prepares him by forcing him to buy his ships in the costliest
market and operate them in accordance with a hampering and extravagant
system of navigation laws.
[Illustration: _Photo by Brown Bros._
AN ERUPTION OF THE CANAL BED
The pressure of the adjoining hills has forced up the soil at its
weakest point, namely the bed of the Canal, to a height of 18 feet, as
shown by the dotted line]
The ease however with which English or German ships en route to the Far
East may touch at New York, Boston or Philadelphia will doubtless divert
to Panama some of the traffic that would find a shorter through route
via Suez. For example, from Liverpool to Melbourne is 1312 miles less
via Suez than by way of Panama, while to Hongkong it is 694 miles less.
Yet it is quite conceivable that the advantage of taking New York or
other United States Atlantic ports on the way may secure some of this
traffic for Panama.
The really striking saving in time and distance is shown by a comparison
of the present distances between our Atlantic coast towns and
Australasia and the Orient. Prof. Johnson has put this in two compact
tables, which I quote from _The Scientific American_:
TABLE I.--DISTANCES AND TIME SAVED VIA THE PANAMA CANAL AS CONTRASTED
WITH ROUTES VIA THE SUEZ CANAL, THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE, AND THE STRAITS
OF MAGELLAN BETWEEN THE ATLANTIC GULF SEABOARD OF THE UNITED STATES AND
AUSTRALASIA
==========+=====+=============================+=======================
| | FROM NEW YORK |
TO |Dis- | Days saved for vessels of | REMARKS
|tance+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
|saved| 9 | 10 | 12 | 14 | 16 |
| |knots|knots|knots|knots|knots|
----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----------------------
|Miles| | | | | |
Adelaide |1,746| 7.5 | 6.7 | 5.6 | 4.6 | 4.0 |Difference between
| | | | | | |routes via Panama,
| | | | | | |Tahiti, Sydney, and
| | | | | | |Melbourne, and via St.
| | | | | | |Vincent and Cape of
| | | | | | |Good Hope.
Melbourne |2,770|12.3 |11.0 | 9.1 | 7.7 | 6.7 |Difference between
| | | | | | |routes via Panama,
| | | | | | |Tahiti, and Sydney and
| | | | | | |via St. Vincent, Cape
| | | | | | |of Good Hope, and
| | | | | | |Adelaide.
Sydney |3,932|17.7 |15.8 |13.1 |11.2 | 9.7 |Difference between
| | | | | | |routes via Panama and
| | | | | | |Tahiti, and via St.
| | | | | | |Vincent, Cape of Good
| | | | | | |Hope, Adelaide, and
| | | | | | |Melbourne.
Wellington|2,493|11.0 | 9.9 | 8.1 | 6.9 | 6.0 |Difference between
| | | | | | |routes via Panama and
| | | | | | |Tahiti and via Straits
| | | | | | |of Magellan.
----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----------------------
==========+=====+=============================+=======================
| | FROM NEW ORLEANS |
TO |Dis- | Days saved for vessels of | REMARKS
|tance+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
|saved| 9 | 10 | 12 | 14 | 16 |
| |knots|knots|knots|knots|knots|
----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----------------------
|Miles| | | | | |
Adelaide |3,258|14.6 |13.1 |10.8 | 9.2 | 8.0 |Difference between
| | | | | | |routes via Panama,
| | | | | | |Tahiti, Sydney, and
| | | | | | |Melbourne, and via St.
| | | | | | |Vincent and Cape of
| | | | | | |Good Hope.
Melbourne |4,282|19.3 |17.3 |14.3 |12.2 |10.7 |Difference between
| | | | | | |routes via Panama,
| | | | | | |Tahiti, and Sydney and
| | | | | | |via St. Vincent, Cape
| | | | | | |of Good Hope, and
| | | | | | |Adelaide.
Sydney |5,444|24.6 |22.2 |18.4 |15.7 |13.7 |Difference between
| | | | | | |routes via Panama and
| | | | | | |Tahiti, and via St.
| | | | | | |Vincent, Cape of Good
| | | | | | |Hope, Adelaide, and
| | | | | | |Melbourne.
Wellington|3,488|15.6 |14.0 |11.6 | 9.9 | 8.6 |Difference between
| | | | | | |routes via Panama and
| | | | | | |Tahiti and via Straits
| | | | | | |of Magellan.
----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----------------------
TABLE II.--DISTANCES AND DAYS SAVED BY THE PANAMA OR THE SUEZ CANAL
BETWEEN THE ATLANTIC GULF SEABOARD OF THE UNITED STATES AND JAPAN,
CHINA, THE PHILIPPINES, AND SINGAPORE
=========+=======+===================================+================
| | FROM NEW YORK |
| +-----+-----------------------------+
TO | VIA | | Days saved for vessels of | REMARKS
| | Dis-+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| |tance| 9 | 10 | 12 | 14 | 16 |
| |saved|knots|knots|knots|knots|knots|
---------+-------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----------------
| |Miles| | | | | |
Yokohama |{Panama|3,768|16.9 |15.2 |12.6 |10.7 | 9.3 |Via San
|{ | | | | | | |Francisco.
|{Suez | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |Via Colombo,
|{ | | | | | | |Singapore,
|{ | | | | | | |Hongkong and
|{ | | | | | | |Shanghai.
| | | | | | | |
Shanghai |{Panama|1,876| 8.1 | 7.3 | 6.0 | 5.1 | 4.4 |Via San
|{ | | | | | | |Francisco and
|{ | | | | | | |Yokohama.
|{Suez | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |Via Colombo,
|{ | | | | | | |Singapore and
|{ | | | | | | |Hongkong.
| | | | | | | |
Hongkong |{Panama| ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |Via San
|{ | | | | | | |Francisco,
|{ | | | | | | |Yokohama and
|{ | | | | | | |Shanghai.
|{Suez | 18| ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |Via Colombo and
|{ | | | | | | |Singapore.
| | | | | | | |
Manila. |{Panama| 41| ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |Via San
|{ | | | | | | |Francisco and
|{ | | | | | | |Yokohama.
|{Suez | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |Via Colombo and
|{ | | | | | | |Singapore.
| | | | | | | |
Singapore|{Panama| ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |Via San
|{ | | | | | | |Francisco and
|{ | | | | | | |Yokohama.
|{Suez |2,484|11.0 | 9.8 | 8.4 | 6.9 | 5.9 |Via Colombo.
---------+-------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----------------
=========+=======+===================================+================
| | FROM NEW ORLEANS |
| +-----+-----------------------------+
TO | VIA | | Days saved for vessels of | REMARKS
| | Dis-+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| |tance| 9 | 10 | 12 | 14 | 16 |
| |saved|knots|knots|knots|knots|knots|
---------+-------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----------------
| |Miles| | | | | |
Yokohama |{Panama|5,705|25.9 |23.3 |19.3 |16.5 |14.4 |Via San
|{ | | | | | | |Francisco.
|{Suez | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |Via Colombo,
|{ | | | | | | |Singapore,
|{ | | | | | | |Hongkong and
|{ | | | | | | |Shanghai.
| | | | | | | |
Shanghai |{Panama|3,813|17.1 |15.4 |12.7 |10.8 | 9.4 |Via San
|{ | | | | | | |Francisco and
|{ | | | | | | |Yokohama.
|{Suez | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |Via Colombo,
|{ | | | | | | |Singapore and
|{ | | | | | | |Hongkong.
| | | | | | | |
Hongkong |{Panama|1,919| 8.4 | 7.5 | 6.2 | 5.2 | 4.5 |Via San
|{ | | | | | | |Francisco,
|{ | | | | | | |Yokohama and
|{ | | | | | | |Shanghai.
|{Suez | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |Via Colombo and
|{ | | | | | | |Singapore.
| | | | | | | |
Manila. |{Panama|1,978| 8.6 | 7.7 | 6.4 | 5.4 | 4.7 |Via San
|{ | | | | | | |Francisco and
|{ | | | | | | |Yokohama.
|{Suez | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |Via Colombo and
|{ | | | | | | |Singapore.
| | | | | | | |
Singapore|{Panama| ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |Via San
|{ | | | | | | |Francisco and
|{ | | | | | | |Yokohama.
|{Suez | 547| 2.0 | 1.7 | 1.4 | 1.1 | 0.9 |Via Colombo.
---------+-------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----------------
So far as Asiatic traffic is concerned, there is almost sure to be some
overlapping of routes. Conditions other than those of time and space
will occasionally control shipmasters in the choice of a route. But so
far as the trade of our Atlantic ports with Hongkong, the Philippines
and points north and east thereof is concerned it will all go through
Panama. So, too, with the vessels from English, French or German ports.
If the contemplated economies offered by the price of coal and fuel oil
at Balboa are effected, the inducements of this route will divert from
Suez all European shipping bound for Asiatic ports north of India. A
careful study of the Suez Canal shows that the trade of the United
States with all foreign countries made up 33 per cent of the total
traffic, and the commerce of Europe with the west coast of South America
comprised 38 per cent. Col. Johnson compiled for the benefit of the
Commission a table which showed the vessels which might advantageously
have used the Canal in 1909 and 1910, and accompanied it with another
giving his estimate of the amount of shipping that actually will use the
Canal in 1915 and thereafter. As the expression of official opinion
based upon the most careful research, these tables are here republished.
CLASSIFICATION OF ESTIMATED NET TONNAGE OF SHIPPING USING THE PANAMA
CANAL IN 1915, 1920 AND 1925
----------------------------------+----------+----------+----------
| Average | |
| per annum| |
| during | |
| 1915 and | |
| 1916 | 1920 | 1925
----------------------------------+----------+----------+----------
Coast-to-coast American shipping | 1,000,000| 1,414,000| 2,000,000
American shipping carrying foreign| | |
commerce of the United States | 720,000| 910,000 | 1,500,000
Foreign shipping carrying commerce| | |
of the United States and foreign | | |
countries | 8,780,000|11,020,000|13,850,000
+----------+----------+----------
Total |10,500,000|13,344,000|17,000,000
----------------------------------+----------+----------+----------
[Illustration: CULEBRA CUT ON A HAZY DAY]
NET TONNAGE OF VESSELS THAT MIGHT HAVE ADVANTAGEOUSLY USED A PANAMA
CANAL IN 1909-10.
-------------------------------------+----------+----------+----------
| | | Total
| Total | Total | Entrances
| Entrances|Clearances| and
| | |Clearances
-------------------------------------+----------+----------+----------
Europe with: | | |
Western South America | 1,553,887| 1,594,513| 3,148,400
Western Central America and Pacific| | |
Mexico | 80,788| 118,714| 199,502
Pacific United States, British | | |
Columbia, and Hawaii | 419,865| 269,853| 689,718
Pacific United States via Suez | | |
Canal | (1) | (1) |(1)158,000
Oriental countries east of | | |
Singapore and Oceania | 618,704| 555,881| 1,174,585
| | |
Eastern United States coast with: | | |
Western South America, Pacific | | |
Mexico, and Hawaii | 309,909| 166,686| 467,595
Pacific Coast of United States (via| | |
Cape Horn) | 117,147| 55,508| 172,655
Pacific Coast of United States and | | |
Hawaii (via American-Hawaiian S.S. | | |
Co.) | 181,713| 181,713| 363,426
Oriental countries east of | | |
Singapore and Oceania | 600,000| 900,000| 1,500,000
| | |
Pacific traffic: | | |
Pacific Coast | 158,558| 259,932| 418,490
Atlantic Coast | --| --| --
| | |
Eastern Canada with Alaska, | | |
Chile and Australia | 13,410| 22,248| 35,658
-------------------------------------+----------+----------+----------
Total | 4,044,981| 4,125,048| 8,328,029
-------------------------------------+----------+----------+----------
NOTE.--(1) Reported by Suez Canal Company; hence the total is not
separable into entrances and clearances at American ports.
After all, however, the most patient investigation of the past and the
most careful and scientific calculations of the probabilities of the
future may produce a wholly inaccurate result. The real effect of the
Canal on the world’s commerce may be something wholly different from
what the experts expect. But we may proceed upon the well-established
fact that no new route of swifter and cheaper transportation ever failed
to create a great business, and to develop thriving communities along
its route. This fact finds illustration in the building up of the
suburbs and back country by the development of trolley lines, and, on a
larger scale, the prodigious growth of our Pacific coast after the
transcontinental railroads had fought their way to every corner of that
empire still in the making. Much is uncertain about what the Panama
Canal will do for the expansion of our trade and influence, but the one
thing that is certain is that no sane man is likely to put the figures
of increase and extension too high.
[Illustration: _Photo by Brown Bros._
BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF MIRAFLORES LOCK
At the upper end of the lock the guide wall extends into Miraflores
lake; the lower end opens into the tide-water Canal.]
More and more the exports of the United States are taking the form of
manufactured goods. The old times when we were the granary of the world
are passing away and the moment is not far distant when we shall produce
barely enough for our rapidly increasing population. British Columbia is
taking up the task of feeding the world where we are dropping it. On
the other hand, our manufacturing industry is progressing with giant
strides and, while a few years ago our manufacturers were content with
their rigidly protected home market, they are now reaching out for the
markets of foreign lands. Figures just issued show that in 10 years our
exports of manufactured goods have increased 70 per cent. The
possibilities of the Asiatic market, which the Canal brings so much more
closely to our doors, are almost incalculable. For cotton goods alone
China and India will afford a market vastly exceeding any which is now
open to our cotton mills, and if, as many hold, the Chinese shall
themselves take up the manufacture of the fleecy staple they will have
to turn to New England and Pennsylvania for their machinery and to our
cotton belt of states for the material. The ships from Charleston,
Savannah, New Orleans and Galveston, which so long steamed eastward with
their cargoes of cotton, will in a few years turn their prows toward the
setting sun. Indeed these southern ports should be among the first to
feel the stimulating effect of the new markets. Southern tobacco,
lumber, iron and coal will find a new outlet, and freight which has been
going to Atlantic ports will go to the Gulf--the front door to the
Canal.
[Illustration: HANDLING BROKEN ROCK]
[Illustration: _Photo by American Press Association_
LOCK CONSTRUCTION SHOWING CONDUITS]
How swiftly and efficiently American manufacturers and jobbers will
seize upon the new conditions and avail themselves of this opening of
new fields is yet to be determined. The enemies of a protective tariff
are not the only ones who hold that it has had the result of dulling
the keen spirit of adventurous enterprise for which our people were once
noted. The absolute possession of a home market ever growing in size and
into which no foreigner could enter with any hope of successful
competition has naturally engaged at home the attention of our captains
of industry. Bold and dashing spirits of the sort that one hundred years
ago were covering the seas with Baltimore clippers and the output of the
New England shipyards turned their attention half a century ago to the
building of railroads and the development of our western frontier. When
the middle-aged men of today were boys, the heroes of their story books
ran away to sea and after incredible adventures came home in command of
clipper ships trading to China. Today the same class of fiction starts
the aspiring boy in as a brakeman or a mill hand and he emerges as a
railroad president or the head of a great manufacturing industry.
[Illustration: TRAVELING CRANE HANDLING CONCRETE IN LOCK-BUILDING
These cranes are the striking feature of the Canal landscape, handling
thousands of tons of concrete daily]
[Illustration: TIVOLI HOTEL FROM HOSPITAL GROUNDS]
[Illustration: MESTIZO GIRL OF CHORRERA]
Whether the earlier spirit of world conquest will again spring up in the
American mind so long content with the profits of its own national
preserves is yet to be demonstrated. To what extent it has vanished any
thoughtful traveler in foreign lands observes with a sigh. One sees
evidences of its weakness at every foreign international exhibition, for
the American section is generally the least impressive there. The
opinion of our manufacturers is often that to show their products abroad
is folly because foreign manufacturers will imitate them with cheaper
materials and labor. In most foreign markets, in the cities of Europe,
South America and the Orient the chief American products you see
displayed are those manufactured by one of those combinations of capital
we call a trust, and they are usually sold abroad at lower prices than
at home. Typewriters, adding machines, sewing machines, shoes and the
divers products of the protean Standard Oil Company seem to be the most
vigorous representatives of American industrial activity abroad.
Nevertheless the recent statistics show that our experts are on the
up-grade, and evidences of growing interest in our export trade multiply
daily.
That the Canal of itself will not make amends for indifference or
lethargy on the part of our manufacturers goes without saying. The
nation may supply them with the waterway, but it cannot compel them to
use it, or even teach them how. Every American traveler in South America
has groaned over the reports that come from every side concerning the
fatuity with which our manufacturers permit themselves to be distanced
in the race for the trade of those republics. Our consular reports are
filled with suggestions from consuls, but the various associations of
exporters are so busy passing platitudinous resolutions about the need
of taking the consular service out of politics that they have no time to
heed the really valuable suggestions offered. Our methods of packing
goods, and our systems of credits, are repugnant to the South American
needs and customs and the fact has been set forth in detail in
innumerable consular reports without any response on the part of our
exporters. The American attitude is “what is good enough at home is good
enough abroad”--which is patriotic but not a good rule on which to
attempt building up foreign trade. Incidentally sometimes what is good
enough for a home market is often too good for a Latin-American one. The
English and the Germans recognize this and govern themselves
accordingly.
It is a far cry from digging a canal to the system of educating young
men to represent a firm in foreign lands. Yet one finds in visiting
South America, or for that matter Oriental cities, that a great deal of
the rapid expansion of German trade is due to the systematic education
of boys for business in foreign lands. The weakest part of the
educational system of the United States is its indifference to foreign
tongues, an indifference possibly quite natural because but few
Americans have really any need for any language except their own. But
the German representatives sent to South America are at home in the
Spanish tongue, and carefully schooled in the commercial needs and
customs of the Latin-American countries before they reach them. They are
backed, too, by a strong semi-official organization in their own
country. They have in most of the principal South American towns German
banks quite as interested as the salesmen themselves in the extension of
German trade. It is reported that whenever paper involved in an American
transaction with a South American buyer passes through a German bank in
South America a report of the transaction is sent to some central German
agency which tries to divert the next business of the same sort into
German hands. I have no personal knowledge of such transactions, but the
story is current in South America and it is quite in accord with the
German’s infinite capacity for taking pains with little things.
[Illustration: Copyright, 1913, F. E. Wright.
SANTA ANA PLAZA, PANAMA
This plaza was built up largely during the French régime and the open
air cafés are relics of that period of pleasure. It is the gayest of the
town’s rallying places.]
[Illustration: HOW CORN IS GROUND]
Foreign ships, no less than foreign banks and the excellence of foreign
commercial schools, are and will continue to be a factor in the building
up of foreign trade via the Canal. Just as the German banks report to
their home commercial organizations the transactions of other countries
in lands whose trade is sought, so foreign ships naturally work for the
advantage of the country whose flag they fly. Surprising as it may seem
to many, and disappointing as it must be to all, it is the unfortunate
fact that within a year of the time set for opening the Panama Canal to
commerce there is not the slightest evidence that that great work is
going to have any influence whatsoever toward the creation of a United
States fleet in foreign trade. England, Germany, Italy and Japan are all
establishing new lines, the last three with the aid of heavy subsidies.
But in April, 1913, a recognized authority on the American merchant
marine published this statement: “So far as international commerce via
Panama is concerned not one new keel is being laid in the United States
and not one new ship has even been projected. The Panama Canal act of
last August reversed our former policy and granted free American
registry to foreign-built ships for international commerce through the
Panama Canal or elsewhere. But this ‘free-ship’ policy has utterly
failed. Not one foreign ship has hoisted the American flag, not one
request for the flag has reached the Bureau of Navigation”.
[Illustration: THEY USED TO DO THIS IN NEW ENGLAND]
The reason for this is the archaic condition of our navigation laws. The
first cost of a ship, even though somewhat greater when built in
American yards, becomes a negligible factor in comparison with a law
which makes every expense incurred in operating it 10 to 20 per cent
higher than like charges on foreign vessels. James J. Hill, the great
railroad builder, who planned a line of steamships to the Orient and
built the two greatest ships that ever came from an American yard, said
once to the writer, “I can build ships in the United States as
advantageously as on the Clyde and operate them without a subsidy. But
neither I nor any other man can maintain a line of American ships at a
profit while the navigation laws put us at a disadvantage in competition
with those of every other nation”. Those mainly responsible for the
enactment and maintenance of the navigation laws declare them to be
essential to secure proper wages and treatment of the American sailor,
but the effect has been to deprive the sailor of the ships necessary to
earn his livelihood.
[Illustration: _Photo by Brown Bros._
PILE-DRIVER AND DREDGE AT BALBOA DOCK]
However, coastwise shipping will be greatly stimulated by the Canal. In
the midst of the lamentation about the disappearance of the American
flag from the high seas it is gratifying to reflect that the merchant
marine of the United States is really the second in the world, though
our share in international shipping is almost negligible. That we rank
second as a whole is due to the phenomenal development of our shipping
on the great lakes where with a season barely eight months long a
shipping business is done that dwarfs the Mediterranean or the German
Ocean into insignificance. This has built up a great shipbuilding
business on the lakes, and steel ships are even now being built on the
Detroit River to engage in Panama trade. There are not wanting those who
hold that if the money which has been spent at Panama for the good of
the whole world, had been expended in making a thirty-foot ship canal
from Lake Erie to tide-water on the Hudson, the benefit to the people of
the United States, and to American shipping would have been vastly
greater.
[Illustration: _Photo by Brown Bros._
GIANT CEMENT CARRIERS AT WORK
Placed in pairs on either side of a piece of work requiring concrete,
these frames support cables in which swing cars carrying concrete and
controlled by a workman in the elevated house shown]
Indeed one of the pathetic things in the history of commerce is the
persistence with which enterprising Chicagoans, and other
mid-westerners, have tried to establish all-water routes to the European
markets. All such endeavors have failed, costing their projectors
heavily. It will aid, however, if the success of the Panama Canal shall
not reanimate the effort to secure deep-water channels from the Lakes to
the Gulf and from the Lakes to the Atlantic. After Panama the nation is
unlikely to be daunted by any canal-digging project. Having improved the
ocean highway, the people will demand easier access to it. Already there
is discussion of whether the railroads will help or hamstring the Canal.
Cargoes for the ships have to be gathered in the interior. When
delivered at the seaport of their destination they have to be
distributed to interior markets. It is in the power of the railroads to
make such charges for this service as would seriously impede the
economic use of the Canal.
Among the great canals of the world that at Panama ranks easily first in
point of cost, though in length it is outdone by many, and its place as
a carrier of traffic is yet to be determined. There are now in operation
nine artificial waterways which may properly be called ship canals,
namely:
1.--The Suez Canal, begun in 1859 and completed in 1869.
2.--The Cronstadt and St. Petersburg Canal, begun in 1877 and completed
in 1890.
3.--The Corinth Canal, begun in 1884 and completed in 1893.
4.--The Manchester Ship Canal, completed in 1893.
5.--The Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, connecting the Baltic and North Seas,
completed in 1895.
6.--The Elbe and Trave Canal, connecting the North Sea and Baltic,
opened in 1900.
7.--The Welland Canal, connecting Lake Erie with Lake Ontario.
8 and 9.--The two canals, United States and Canadian, respectively,
connecting Lake Superior with Lake Huron.
The Suez Canal naturally suggests itself for comparison, though it falls
far short in volume of traffic of either of the two canals at Sault Ste.
Marie, between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. It is ninety miles long, or
just about twice the length of the Panama, and about two-thirds of its
length is dredged through shallow lakes. It is 31 feet deep as against
Panama’s 45, with a surface width of 420 feet, while the Panama Canal is
from 300 to 1000 feet. The Suez Canal cost slightly under $100,000,000
and pays dividends at the rate of 12 per cent. Lord Beaconsfield, who
bought control of it for England in face of fierce opposition and was
savagely denounced for wild-cat financiering, secured for the Empire not
merely its strongest bond, but a highly profitable investment as well.
The tolls now charged are about $2 a ton according to the United States
net measurement.
[Illustration: TRACKS ASCENDING FROM LOWER TO UPPER LOCK
Doors giving access to service tunnels are shown at either side of the
central ascent]
Of the other canals enumerated some, like the Manchester and the Elbe
and Trave Canals, are of purely local importance, while others, like the
Kaiser Wilhelm (better known as the Kiel) Canal, are mainly for naval
and military purposes. In volume of traffic the first of all canals in
the world is the American canal at the “Soo”, with the Canadian canal
paralleling it a fair second. The volume of traffic passing through
these waterways during the eight or nine months they are free from ice
is incredible. In 1911 it approximated 40,000,000 tons and exceeded in
volume Suez and all the other ship canals heretofore enumerated
together. To the facilities for water carriage afforded by this and the
neighboring Canadian canal is due much of the rapid growth and
development of the country about the western end of Lake Superior. What
countries will profit in the same way by the work at Panama? The Pacific
coast, both of North and South America. Perhaps South America even more
than our own land, for its present state admits of such development.
One problem opened by the Panama Canal which seldom suggests itself to
the merely casual mind is the one involved in keeping it clear of the
infectious and epidemic diseases for which Asiatic and tropical ports
have a sinister reputation. The opening of the Suez Canal was followed
by new danger from plague, cholera and yellow fever in Mediterranean
countries. A like situation may arise at Panama. It is proposed, though
I think not yet officially, to have passing vessels from infected ports
inspected at the entrance to the Canal. If infection exists the ship can
be fumigated during the passage through the Canal, which will take from
ten to twelve hours, while the subsequent voyage to her home port,
whether on our Atlantic coast or in Europe, will make any subsequent
delay in quarantine needless. The plague is the disease most dreaded in
civilized communities, which it only enters by being brought by ship
from some Asiatic port in which it is prevalent. Its germs can be
carried by rats as well as by human beings, and for this reason in some
ports vessels from suspected ports are not allowed to come up to a dock
lest the rodents slip ashore carrying the pestilence. Sometimes in such
ports you will see a vessel’s hawsers obstructed by large metal disks,
past which no rat may slip if he tries the tight-rope route to the
shore. The new contracts for wharves, docks and piers at all our Zone
ports prescribe that they shall be rat-proof. Indeed the rodents are
very much under the ban in Panama, and the annual slaughter by the
Sanitary Department exceeds 12,000.
[Illustration: _Photo by Brown Bros._
COL. GOETHALS’ HOUSE AT CULEBRA
As is fitting, “The Colonel’s” house tops the highest hill in Culebra,
looking down the cut]
Preparations are being made to make Balboa a quarantine station of
world-wide importance. The mere proximity of the date for opening the
Canal has caused discussion of its effect upon the health of civilized
nations. At Suez an International Board exists for the purpose of so
guarding that gateway from the East that none of the pestilences for
which the Orient has an ill-fame can slip through. No suggestion has
been made of international control at Panama. In fact such of the
foreign articles as have come under my eye have been flattering to us as
a nation, asserting, as they all do, that in sanitary science the United
States is so far ahead that the quarantine service may be safely
entrusted to this nation alone. Despite this cheerful optimism of
Europe, there has not yet been a very prompt acquiescence by Congress in
the estimates presented by Col. Gorgas for the permanent housing and
maintenance of the quarantine service. Since the United States is to
give the Canal to the world, it should so equip the gift that it will
not be a menace to the world’s health.
[Illustration: ELECTRIC TOWING LOCOMOTIVES ON A LOCK]
CHAPTER XX
DIPLOMACY AND POLITICS OF THE CANAL
Having built the Panama Canal at a heavy cost of treasure and no light
cost of life, having subdued to our will the greatest forces of nature
and put a curb upon the malevolent powers of tropical miasma and
infection, we are about to give the completed result to the whole world.
It stands as a free gift, for never can any tolls that will be imposed
make of it a commercial success. It was the failure to recognize this
inevitable fact that made it impossible for the French to complete the
task. It will be a national asset, not because of the income gathered at
its two entrances, but because of the cheapening of freight rates
between our two coasts and the consequent reduction of prices to our
citizens. But this advantage will accrue to peoples who have not paid a
dollar of taxation toward the construction of the Canal. There is
absolutely no advantage which the Canal may present to the people of New
England that will not be shared equally by the people of the Canadian
provinces of Quebec and Ontario if they desire to avail themselves of
the opportunity. Our gulf ports of Mobile, New Orleans and Galveston
expect, and reasonably so, that the volume of their traffic will be
greatly increased by the opening of the Canal. But if Rio de Janeiro,
Buenos Ayres and Montevideo have products they desire to ship to the
Orient or to the western coast of their own continent of South America
the Canal is open to them as freely as to our ships.
Having given to the world so great a benefaction, it will be the part of
the international statesmen of the United States, the diplomatists, to
see to it that the gift is not distorted, nor, through any act of ours,
divided unequally among those sharing in it. Upon the diplomacy of the
United States the opening of the Canal will impose many new burdens and
responsibilities.
[Illustration: A CHURCH IN CHORRERA]
Scarcely any general European war involved more intricate and delicate
questions of the reciprocal rights of nations than did the acquisition
of the Suez Canal by Great Britain. Volumes have been written on the
subject of the diplomacy of Suez. The Constantinople conference called
for the discussion of that topic, and the specific delimitation of the
authority of Great Britain and the rights of other maritime nations was
one of the most notable gatherings in the history of diplomacy. The
Panama waterway will bring new problems and intensify old ones for the
consideration of our statesmen. The Monroe Doctrine is likely to come in
for a very, thorough testing and perhaps a new formulation. The precise
scope of that doctrine has of late years become somewhat ill defined.
Foreign nations say that the tendency of the United States is to extend
its powers and ignore its responsibilities under this theory. In Latin
America, where that doctrine should be hailed as a bulwark of
protection, it is looked upon askance. That feeling is largely due to
the attitude of this country toward the Republic of Colombia at the time
of the secession of Panama.
[Illustration: A NATIVE KITCHEN]
A problem of the highest importance to the credit of the United States
in Latin America, which should be settled in accordance with principles
of national honor and international equity, is the determination of what
reparation we owe the Republic of Colombia for our part in the
revolution which made Panama an independent state and gave us the Canal
Zone.
[Illustration: NATIVE HOUSE IN PENOMENE]
In an earlier chapter I have tried to tell, without bias, the story of
that revolution and to leave to the readers’ own judgment the question
whether our part in it was that merely of an innocent bystander, a
neutral looker-on, or whether we did not, by methods of indirection at
least, make it impossible for Colombia to employ her own troops for the
suppression of rebellion in her own territory. As President, and later
as private citizen, Mr. Roosevelt was always exceedingly insistent that
he had adhered to the strictest letter of the neutrality law--always
that is except in that one impetuous speech in San Francisco, in which
he blurted out the boast, “I took Panama and left Congress to debate
about it afterward”.
[Illustration: GIANT CACTI OFTEN USED FOR HEDGING
Planted close together, these cacti form a barrier impassible by
animals]
[Illustration: A STREET IN CHORRERA]
Mr. Roosevelt’s protestations of innocence had, however, little effect
upon his own friends and party associates, for early in the Taft
administration the conviction became general among men in high station
that reparation of some sort was due to Colombia for what was--to
express it guardedly--our connivance at a conspiracy that cost that
republic its richest province--cost it further a lump payment of
$10,000,000 and an annual sum of $250,000 to eternity. The records of
diplomacy are enmeshed in many concealing veils, but enough is known of
the progress of the negotiations to reflect credit upon the diplomacy of
Colombia. That country has neither threatened nor blustered--and the
undeniable fact that the comparative power of Colombia and the United
States would make threats and bluster ridiculous would not ordinarily
deter a Latin-American President from shrieking shrill defiance at least
for the benefit of his compatriots. Colombia has been persistent but not
petulant. It has stated its case to two administrations and has wrung
from both the confession that the United States in that revolution acted
the part of an international bandit. Out of the recesses of the
Department of State has leaked the information that the United States
has made to Colombia a tentative offer of $10,000,000, but that it had
been refused. But the offer itself was a complete confession on the part
of the United States of its guilt in the transaction complained of.
Naturally, Colombia declined the proffered conscience money. Panama
received from the United States not merely $10,000,000, but will get
$250,000 a year for an indefinite period. All this Colombia lost and her
valuable province as well because the captain of a United States
man-of-war would not let the Colombian colonels on that day of
revolution use force to compel a railroad manager to carry their troops
across the Isthmus. The grievance of the Colombians is a very real and
seemingly just one.
We hear much of the national honor in reference to canal tolls but less
of it in relation to this controversy with Colombia. Yet that
controversy ought to be settled and settled justly. It is inconceivable,
of course, that it should be determined by restoring the status as it
existed before that day of opera-bouffe revolution. Our investment in
the Canal Zone, our duty to the world which awaits the opening of the
Canal, and our loyalty to our partner, Panama, alike make that
impossible. The Republic of Panama is an accomplished fact not to be
obliterated even in the interest of precise justice. As the Persian poet
put it:
“The moving finger writes, and having writ
Moves on; nor all your piety nor wit,
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears wash out one word of it”.
President Roosevelt wrote the word Panama on the list of nations and
moved on vastly pleased with the record.
[Illustration: _Photo by Brown Bros._
THE TOWN OF EMPIRE, SOON TO BE ABANDONED]
The situation at the same time is one not to be lightly dealt with. The
United States is none too popular at any point south of its own borders.
It is at the one time hated and feared. The very Panamanians whom we
invested with independence have no liking for us and the hatred of the
Colombians for the nation that despoiled them is so general and extreme
that their rulers are entitled to the utmost credit for having observed
all the courtesies of diplomacy in their efforts to secure some measure
of reparation. The question presents itself, is it wise to leave such a
hot-bed of hatred, of resentment perhaps justifiable, in the very midst
of Latin America, just when we are hoping by our new Canal to extend and
cement our commercial relations with them? Among the Latin Americans
there is a very general feeling that our devotion to the Monroe Doctrine
is indicative only of our purpose to protect our neighbors against any
selfish aggressions except our own. It is of the very highest importance
that this feeling be dissipated, and there is perhaps no more immediate
way of beginning that task than by reaching such an agreement with
Colombia as shall indicate to other South American governments our
purpose of doing exact justice among our neighbors, be they great and
powerful or small and weak.
[Illustration: PANAMA RAILROAD BRIDGE ACROSS THE CHAGRES]
With all the South American countries the commerce of the Canal will
tend to bring us into closer relations and to multiply the possibility
of international dissension. Moreover, the growing interests of United
States business men in those countries form national outposts on which
we must ever keep a friendly eye. It is ridiculous to urge upon
individuals the task of stimulating and extending our foreign trade if
the government is to be wholly indifferent to their efforts. It is known
that the great beef packers of Chicago have considerable plants in the
Argentine; that a famous iron manufacturer of Pittsburgh has in Chile
what is believed to be the largest iron mine in the world; that the
Standard Oil Company has its agencies throughout the continent; and the
Du Pont Powder Company besides maintaining two nitrate plants in Chile
does a prodigious business in explosives with the various states--and
not mainly for military purposes only. The United States Steel Company
has a vanadium mine in Peru where 3000 Americans are working. The
equipment of street railways and electric-lighting plants in South
American cities is almost wholly of American manufacture. Even without
the systematic encouragement of their home government, American business
men have begun to make inroads upon German and English commercial power
in South America, and the opening of the Canal will increase their
activities. Today our Pacific coast is practically shut off from any
interchange of commodities with Brazil and the Argentine; with the Canal
open a direct waterway will undoubtedly stimulate a considerable trade.
The more trade is stimulated, the more general travel becomes between
nations, the less becomes the danger of war. There is no inconsistency
in the statement that the Canal will become a powerful factor in the
world’s peace, even though it does necessitate the maintenance of a
bigger navy and the erection of powerful forts for its defense in the
improbable event of war.
[Illustration: A STREET IN CHORRERA]
This is but one phase of the influence the Canal will exercise upon
countries other than the United States. What it will do for the
Latin-American countries immediately adjacent to Panama in the direction
of leading them to establish improved sanitation systems, or to perfect
those they now maintain, is beyond present estimate. Many such
governments have had their representatives on the Zone to study the
methods there in force, and while the present writer was there Col.
Gorgas was besought to visit Guayaquil to give its rulers expert advice
on the correction of the unsanitary state of that city. Members of the
staff of Col. Gorgas are in demand as experts in all parts of the world.
I know of one who in the last days of the Canal construction was sent by
the German government to establish in some of the German South African
provinces the methods that brought health to the Isthmus after the days
of the futile French struggle with fever and malaria.
It is because of this influence upon foreign peoples, already apparent,
that far-sighted people find intolerable the proposition to let the
Canal Zone grow up into jungle and return to its original state of
savagery. It can and should be made an object lesson to the world. From
every ship that makes the ten-hour passage of the Canal some passengers
will go ashore for rest from the long voyage and to see what the Zone
may have to show them. Are we content to have them see only the hovels
of Colon and the languid streets of Panama--exhibits that give no idea
of the force, the imagination, the idealism that gave being to the
Canal? Today the Zone is a little bit of typical United States life set
down in the tropics. So it might remain if due encouragement were given
to industrious settlers. There is not so much land in the world that
this need be wasted, nor have there been so many examples of the
successful creation and continuance of such a community as the Zone has
been as to justify its obliteration before the world has grasped its
greatest significance.
[Illustration: A PEARL ISLAND VILLAGE]
There are not lacking those philosophers who hold that the first
political effect of the Canal will be to force us to abandon that
attitude of national isolation and aloofness prescribed in Washington’s
deprecation of “entangling alliances abroad”. They hold that this latest
and greatest addition to our reasons for solicitude about the control of
the Pacific will compel us to seek the coöperation of other powers--or
_another_ power--to make that control complete. Perhaps the proposition
is most frankly stated in this paragraph from Mr. Frank Fox’s “Problems
of the Pacific”.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM OF COMPARATIVE EXCAVATIONS BY THE FRENCH AND
AMERICANS IN CULEBRA CUT]
“The friendly coöperation between the United States and Great Britain
would give to the Anglo-Saxon race the mastery of the world’s greatest
ocean, laying forever the fear of the Yellow Peril, securing for the
world that its greatest readjustment of the balance of power shall be
effected in peace, while rivalry between these two kindred nations may
cause the gravest evils and possibly irreparable disasters”.
[Illustration: _Photo by W. R. Burtis_
VIEW OF PEDRO MIGUEL LOCKS NEARING COMPLETION]
This is no place to discuss this thesis, but even the most casual
consideration shows how great a mutual interest the United States and
Great Britain have in the Panama Canal and its safeguarding from any
disturbing conditions in the Pacific. Until conditions change and the
United States regains its place among the maritime nations of the world
the bulk of the trade passing through the Canal will be in British
ships. For New Zealand and all of the eastern part of British Australia
the Panama route offers the most expeditious connection with Liverpool.
Canada, too, is vitally interested in the Canal. By the employment of
the system of Georgian Bay and St. Lawrence Canals, which the Dominion
government has created, with a foresight far greater than our own, the
wheat, even of the Winnipeg region, may be sent by water to Montreal
and thence in sea-going ships to the further shore of the Pacific. Even
though owned by the United States, the Canal will be a powerful tie to
bind closer together the widely separated parts of the British Empire.
[Illustration: NATIVE WOMAN, COCLE]
That being true it will further cement the spirit of friendliness
between the United States and Great Britain. It will accomplish this
without formal treaties or proclaimed alliance. The alliance will be
tacit, resulting from the very logic of the situation. Great Britain
cannot afford to be otherwise than friendly with the owner of the
Canal--the little passing tiff over the question of tolls on coastwise
shipping notwithstanding. It is idle to ask that the control of the
Pacific be assured by an Anglo-American compact. More intelligent is it
to assume that any effort to break down that control, which now
virtually exists, would be met by action on the part of the two
English-speaking nations quite as effective as though a treaty existed.
This, too, despite the present Anglo-Japanese treaty which so disquiets
our California citizens, but quite needlessly, in fact, because of that
convention for it promises no support to Japan in the event of the
latter being the aggressor.
[Illustration: RIVER VILLAGE IN CHIRIQUI]
[Illustration: THE PEARL ISLAND VILLAGE OF SABOGA]
Any formal convention, however, any international agreement for the
control of the Pacific which should leave Germany out, would be an
incentive to trouble rather than a bright harbinger of peace. For no
nation is making more active and intelligent preparations to reap to the
fullest the advantages of the Canal than are the Germans. Their nation’s
great interests in Brazil, Argentine, and Chile, her colonizing
activities in Asia, her Chinese port of Kiau-Chou, forcibly wrested from
China, all impel her to take a lively interest in the Canal and the
Pacific. The Kaiser would not look with any placid indifference upon
such an Anglo-American agreement as has been urged, and as its ends can
be, and probably will be attained without formal pronouncement, any open
diplomatic negotiations for such a convention would probably be unwise.
Enough to say that while speculation concerning such an agreement is
quite general among publicists today, no discussion of it has yet
engaged the attention of any statesmen.
After considering the problem of what the Canal will be worth, let us
reverse the ordinary process and figure out what it will cost. Exact
statement is still impossible, for as this book is being printed the
Canal is months away from being usable and probably two years short of
completion if we reckon terminals and fortifications as part of the
completed work.
In an earlier chapter I have set forth some of the estimates of its cost
from the figure of $131,000,000 set by the volatile De Lesseps to the
$375,000,000 of the better informed and more judicious Goethals. In
June, 1913, however, we had at hand the official report of all
expenditures to March, 1913, duly classified as follows:
=CLASSIFIED EXPENDITURES--ISTHMIAN CANAL COMMISSION=
A statement of classified expenditures of the Isthmian Canal Commission
to March 31, 1913, follows:
+------------------------+--------------+----------+--------------+
| | Department |Department| Department |
|Periods | of Civil | of | of |
| |Administration| Law | Sanitation |
+------------------------+--------------+----------+--------------+
|Total to June 30, 1909 | $3,427,090.29| | $9,673,539.28|
|Total--Fiscal Year, 1910| 709,351.37| | 1,803,040.95|
|Total--Fiscal Year, 1911| 755,079.44| | 1,717,792.62|
|Total--Fiscal Year, 1912| 820,398.57| 24,729.16| 1,620,391.12|
|July, 1912 | 63,913.12| 1,448.53| 123,803.64|
|August, 1912 | 62,182.51| 1,468.26| 123,154.48|
|September, 1912 | 59,201.01| 1,207.82| 120,385.70|
|October, 1912 | 64,383.37| 2,033.75| 137,574.61|
|November, 1912 | 62,200.12| 1,892.14| 119,031.66|
|December, 1912 | 58,987.96| 1,462.18| 115,819.26|
|January, 1913 | 57,699.58| 1,469.59| 114,562.04|
|February, 1913 | 56,586.06| 1,649.00| 127,324.80|
|March, 1913 | 58,761.03| 1,899.22| 105,891.08|
| +--------------+----------+--------------+
| Grand total | $6,255,834.43|$39,259.65|$15,902,311.24|
+------------------------+--------------+----------+--------------+
+------------------------+---------------+---------------+
| | Department of| |
|Periods | Construction | General Items |
| |and Engineering| |
+------------------------+---------------+---------------+
|Total to June 30, 1909 | $69,622,561.42|$78,022,606.10 |
|Total--Fiscal Year, 1910| 26,300,167.05| 2,863,088.83 |
|Total--Fiscal Year, 1911| 27,477,776.19| 3,097,959.72 |
|Total--Fiscal Year, 1912| 28,897,738.10| 2,819,926.53 |
|July, 1912 | 2,649,246.61| 200,970.55 |
|August, 1912 | 2,539,680.83| =[A]98,054.61=|
|September, 1912 | 2,285,979.89| 77,003.53 |
|October, 1912 | 2,473,280.76| 83,523.30 |
|November, 1912 | 2,420,085.77| 75,779.01 |
|December, 1912 | 2,871,977.03| 120,946.61 |
|January, 1913 | 2,825,872.06| 6,463.72 |
|February, 1913 | 3,784,370.51| 123,034.12 |
|March, 1913 | 2,712,218.10| =7,706.70=|
| +---------------+---------------+
| Grand total |$176,860,954.32|$87,385,540.71 |
+------------------------+---------------+---------------+
+------------------------+--------------+---------------+
| | | |
|Periods |Fortifications| Total |
| | | |
+------------------------+--------------+---------------+
|Total to June 30, 1909 | |$160,745,797.09|
|Total--Fiscal Year, 1910| | 31,675,648.20|
|Total--Fiscal Year, 1911| | 33,048,607.97|
|Total--Fiscal Year, 1912| 1,212,881.66 | 35,396,065.14|
|July, 1912 | 104,126.92 | 3,143,509.37|
|August, 1912 | 111,402.55 | 2,739,834.02|
|September, 1912 | 127,168.25 | 2,670,946.20|
|October, 1912 | 129,736.37 | 2,890,532.16|
|November, 1912 | 300,016.33 | 2,979,005.03|
|December, 1912 | 118,152.57 | 3,287,345.61|
|January, 1913 | 119,272.77 | 3,125,339.76|
|February, 1913 | 314,994.96 | 4,407,959.45|
|March, 1913 | 131,940.75 | 3,003,003.48|
| +--------------+---------------+
| Grand total |$2,669,693.13 |$289,113,593.48|
+------------------------+--------------+---------------+
[A] Denotes credit.
It will be observed that since the beginning of the fiscal year 1913,
expenditures have averaged a trifle over $3,000,000 a month. This rate
of expenditure may be expected to decrease somewhat during the eighteen
months likely to elapse before the Canal, terminals and forts are
completed. Probably if we allow $250,000 a month for this decrease we
will be near the mark making the future expenditures average $2,750,000
monthly until January, 1915, making in all $57,750,000. Adding this to
the Commission expenditures up to March 31, 1913, and adding further the
$50,000,000 paid to the French stockholders and the Republic of Panama
we reach the sum of $396,863,593--a reasonable estimate of the final
cost of the great world enterprise; the measure in dollars and cents of
the greatest gift ever made by a single nation to the world.
It is worth noting that all this colossal expenditure of money has been
made without any evidence of graft, and practically without charge of
that all-pervading canker in American public work. During a long stay on
the Isthmus, associating constantly with men in every grade of the
Commission’s service, I never heard a definite charge of illegal profits
being taken by anyone concerned in the work. In certain publications
dealing with the undertaking in its earlier days one will find
assertions of underhanded collusion with contractors and of official
raids upon the more select importations of the Commissary without due
payment therefore. But even these charges were vague, resting only on
hearsay, and had to do with an administration which vanished six or more
years ago. Today that chronic libeler “the man in the street” has
nothing to say about graft in connection with Canal contracts, and
“common notoriety”, which usually upholds all sorts of scandalous
imputations, and is cited to maintain various vague allegations, is
decidedly on the side of official integrity at Panama.
This is not to say that the work has been conducted with an eye single
to economy. It has not. That is to say it has not been conducted in
accordance with the common idea of economy. All over the land
contractors, apprehensive of the effect of the Panama example of
government efficiency in public work, are telling how much more cheaply
they could have dug the Panama Canal. Probably they could if they could
have dug it at all. But the sort of economy they are talking about was
definitely abandoned when Col. Gorgas convinced the Commission that it
was reckless extravagance to save $50,000 or so on wire screens and lose
forty or fifty lives in a yellow-fever epidemic. The contractor’s idea
of economy was emphatically set aside when Col. Goethals determined that
it was cheaper to pay engineers one-third more than the current rate at
home, and make such arrangements for their comfort on the Zone that they
would stay on the job, rather than to pay ordinary prices and have them
leave in haste after a month or two of dissatisfied and half-hearted
work.
[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood & Underwood._
THE TUG BOHIO WITH BARGES IN MIDDLE GATUN LOCK]
From which it appears that a new definition of “economy” is needed in
the application of the word to the Canal work.
Whatever may be the influence of the Canal on the position of the United
States as a world power, its influence on the industrial life at home is
likely to be all pervasive and revolutionary. The government is the
largest employer of labor in the land. It ought to be the best employer.
On the Zone it has been the best employer, and has secured the best
results. When government work is to be done hereafter it will not be let
out to private contractors without hesitation and discussion. A
consideration of the results obtained by the State of New York in its
latest expenditure, by the methods of private contract, of the Erie
Canal appropriation of $101,000,000, will go far to show the superiority
of the Panama system. In a recent interview the Secretary of the Navy,
Josephus Daniels, declared it to be the policy of the Department to
build battleships in navy yards so far as possible--a policy which the
shipbuilding interests have steadily resisted in the past. It is not too
much to infer that the success of the army in digging a canal encouraged
the Secretary to show what the navy could do in building its own ships.
[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood & Underwood._
LOOKING DOWN CANAL FROM MIRAFLORES LOCK TO THE PACIFIC]
If the system and conditions of employment that have existed in Panama
could be applied to public service in all other parts of the United
States, the condition of all labor, all industry, all professional
service would be correspondingly improved. For with the most extensive
employer setting the pace all others would have to keep step with it.
When the long account comes to be balanced we may find that the United
States will owe quite as much to the Panama enterprise on the moral as
on the material side. Of course it is going to increase our trade both
foreign and domestic--that, as the French say, goes without saying. It
will cheapen the cost of building cottages in New York suburbs, because
lumber will be brought from the forests of Oregon and Washington for
half the freight cost now exacted. It will stimulate every manufacturing
interest on the Pacific coast for coal from West Virginia will be laid
down there at dollars per ton less than now. The men who catch and can
salmon in the rushing waters of the Columbia, the men who raise and pack
the luscious oranges of southern California will have a new and cheaper
way of carrying their products to the eager markets of the great cities
along the Atlantic coast. At the same time the output of our eastern
steel mills and New England cotton and woolen factories will find a more
expeditious and cheaper route to the builders and workers of the Pacific
coast.
[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood & Underwood._
CULEBRA CUT PARTIALLY FILLED WITH WATER]
Incidentally the labors of the Interstate Commerce Commission are likely
to be multiplied almost incalculably. For it must be accepted as a fact
that free competition is no longer a complete regulator of freight rates
whether by rail or by water. Any one can charter a ship and send it
through the Canal with the same rights and privileges that a long
established line will enjoy. But not every independent ship can find
dockage facilities at both ends of its voyage, although it is true that
the enterprising cities of the Pacific coast are warding off monopoly by
building municipal docks. Moreover, the owner of the independent ship
will have his troubles in getting the railroads at either end to handle
his cargoes and distribute them at such charges as will leave him any
profit. Indeed the independent ship will be but little of a factor in
fixing rates. That will be done by the regular lines. Normally there
should be keen competition between the railroads and the steamships with
a very marked drop in rates. But it will not be well to base too great
hopes on this possibility. Transportation rates, even where there is
nominally free competition, are not often based wholly on the cost of
the service. What the traffic will bear is more often the chief factor
in rate making. Because ships can carry freight from New York to San
Francisco for three dollars a traffic-ton less than the railroads does
not imply that they will do so. Nor does it ensure that railroad rates
will drop spasmodically in a vain effort to keep all the business away
from the ships. Rather is it probable that certain classes of freight
like lumber, coal and ore will be left wholly to the ships, and some
form of agreement as to the essentials of the general rate card will be
arrived at. It is this agreement, which in some form or other is sure to
come, that will engage the attention of the Interstate Commerce
Commission, arouse its ceaseless vigilance and probably necessitate a
material extension of its authority.
In other than material ways the nation will largely profit. I think that
the fact of the Canal’s having been built by army engineers will go far
toward correcting a certain hostility toward the army which is common in
American thought. The Canal proves that the organization of the army,
the education of its officers, is worth something in peace as well as in
war. Of course this has been shown before in countless public works
scattered over the land, but never hitherto in a fashion to command such
attention and to compel such plaudits. There were five Colonels, besides
“The Colonel,” on the Commission which put the big job through, and I do
not believe that the most shrinking civilian who visited the Isthmus on
either business or pleasure found any ground to complain of militarism,
or was overawed by any display of “fuss and feathers.”
[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood & Underwood._
FLOATING ISLANDS IN GATUN LOCK ENTRANCE
These islands, formed of aquatic plants with entwined roots and a little
soil, must be towed away by tugs and sent over the spillway lest they
block navigation.]
The Canal Zone was, of course, a rural community harboring about 65,000
people scattered along a railroad 47 miles long. Yet in the story of
its government there is much that is instructive to the rulers of our
American cities. Every head of the Department of Sanitation in an
American city would profit by a study of Col. Gorgas’s methods in
dealing with the problems of dirt, sewage, and infection. Indeed many of
the ideas he developed are already being adapted to the needs of North
American municipalities. It is becoming quite evident that the
scientific method of controlling insect pests by destroying their
breeding places is the only efficient one. The larvacide man in the
waste places, or the covered garbage can, and screened stable are not as
melodramatic as newspaper shrieks of “Swat the Fly”, but they accomplish
more in the end.
The management of the Panama Railroad by and for the government affords
an object lesson that will be cited when we come to open Alaska. Though
over-capitalized in the time of its private ownership and operation the
railroad under the direction of Col. Goethals has paid a substantial
profit. Though rushed with the work incident to the Canal construction
it has successfully dealt with its commercial business, and has offered
in many ways a true example of successful railway management.
[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood & Underwood._
THE FIRST BOAT THROUGH. I.
The commission tug Gatun, with members of the commission aboard, is
approaching the lower Gatun lock from the Atlantic end of the Canal. The
two pairs of gates are opening for her admission.]
But to my mind more important than any other outcome of the Canal work,
is its complete demonstration of the ability of the United States to do
its own work for its own people, efficiently, successfully and honestly.
That is an exhibit that will not down. The expenditure of fully
$375,000,000 with no perceptible taint of graft is a victory in itself.
There are exceedingly few of our great railroad corporations that can
show as clean a record, and the fact somewhat depreciates the hostility
of some of their heads to the extension into their domain of the
activities of the government. In urging this point no one can be blind
to the fact that the Zone was governed and the Canal work directed by an
autocrat. But the autocrat was directly subject to Congress and had to
come to that body annually for his supplies of money. It was dug by the
army, but no one now doubts that the navy could have done as well, and
few will question that, with the Panama experience as a guide, a mixed
commission of civilians and military and naval officers could
efficiently direct any public work the nation might undertake.
[Illustration: THE FLAG IN TWO OCEANS.
The Oregon steamed 10,000 miles in 1898 to carry the flag from the
Pacific to the theater of war in the Atlantic. Ten hours of steaming
through 50 miles of canal will henceforth make our fleet available in
either ocean.]
So with the Panama Canal approaching completion we can see that its
effects are to be manifold--domestic as well as foreign, moral as well
as material, political as well as economic. If it be properly conducted
in its completed state, managed and directed upon the broad principle
that, though paid for wholly by the United States, it is to exist for
the general good of all mankind, it should be, in the ages to come, the
greatest glory attached to the American flag. In abolishing human
slavery we only followed last in the train of all civilized nations. But
in tearing away the most difficult barrier that nature has placed in the
way of world-wide trade, acquaintance, friendship and peace, we have
done a service to the cause of universal progress and civilization the
worth of which the passage of time will never dim.
* * * * *
Early in the afternoon of October 10, 1913, President Wilson, standing
in the executive offices of the White House, pressed a telegrapher’s
key. Straightway a spark sped along the wires to Galveston, Tex., thence
by cable to the Canal Zone and, in an instant, with a roar and a quaking
of the earth a section of the Gamboa Dyke, which from the beginning has
barred the waters of Gatun Lake from the Culebra Cut, was blown away.
The water gushed through, though not in such a torrent as sightseers had
hoped for, since pumps, started on Oct. 1st, had already filled the cut
to within six feet of the level of the lake. But presently thereafter a
native cayuca, and then a few light power boats sped through the narrow
opening, and there remained no obstacle to the passage of the canal by
such light craft from ocean to ocean.
By the destruction of the Gamboa Dyke on the date fixed Colonel Goethals
carried out a promise he had made long before to himself and to the
people. It was on the 10th of October, 1513, that Balboa strode
thigh-deep into the Pacific Ocean, and, raising on high the standard of
Spain, claimed that sea and all countries abutting upon it for his
sovereign. The United States just four centuries later celebrated one of
the final steps in opening to the commerce of all the world the
water-way between the oceans.
[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood & Underwood._
THE CONTINENT’S BACKBONE BROKEN
The blast that destroyed Gamboa Dyke completed water connection between
the Atlantic and Pacific.]
The demolition of Gamboa Dyke was the culmination of a series of steps
forward toward the completion of the canal during the first week in
October. On the 26th of September the first vessel was raised from the
Atlantic level through the three steps of the Gatun locks to Gatun Lake.
There was no particular pomp or ceremony observed. The craft was merely
an humble tug employed regularly in canal work. Indeed it is said that
it was not at “the colonel’s” initiative that the ceremony of having
Gamboa Dyke blown up by wire from the White House was observed. That
quiet but efficient army engineer signalized his service on the canal
rather by doing things than by celebrating them when done.
From the Pacific end the first lockage was effected on October 14, when
the tug Miraflores with two barges was put through the Miraflores locks,
and floated on Lake Miraflores. The locks at Pedro Miguel were in
condition to elevate the boats to the level of Culebra Cut, but there
was not at he moment enough water in the cut to receive and float them.
[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood & Underwood._
THE FIRST BOAT THROUGH. II.
The _Gatun_ is in the lock, but the gates are not yet closed. They can
be seen folded flush with the wall. When closed water will be admitted
from the sides and bottom of the lock, raising the boat 28¹⁄₃ feet to
the next lock.]
Not long before the first lockages to the level of Gatun Lake there
occurred very great activity of the Cucaracha slide, filling the canal
bed from side to side. As a result no actual passage of the entire canal
was then possible for boats of commercial size. The material thus
blocking the cut is mainly soft earth, and suction dredges were speedily
installed by which it was pumped out and deposited behind the hills
bordering the canal and nearly two miles away.
When the Gamboa Dyke was blown away the villages on the south side of
the canal became wholly inaccessible. Culebra, Matachin, Empire,
Gorgona,--all stirring towns during the busy days of canal
construction,--could no longer be reached by railroad, and their
abandonment, determined upon long before, became final. The houses which
had been the admiration of all visitors to the Zone were taken down in
sections and removed to sites of the new towns which the commission
intends shall be permanent. Culebra lasted longest, as it could still be
reached by shuttle trains crossing the canal on a precarious bridge near
the Pedro Miguel locks; but it in the end vanished with the rest.
There remain no epoch-making events to be celebrated in the progress of
the canal to completion. As the dredges make further inroads upon the
Cucaracha slide, larger and larger vessels will pass through, without
ceremony, until the canal is open to all. The final celebration, January
1, 1915, will not precede but follow long after the actual employment of
the canal by the commerce of all nations.
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Transcriber’s Notes
Inconsistent spelling, hyphenation, etc. has been retained, including
those of proper and geographic names, except as mentioned below
(Penonome and variants, Coclé / Cocle, Nunez / Nuñez, mosquitos /
mosquitoes, Sambu / Sanbu, avocada / avocado, etc.) The (minor)
differences in wording between the List of Illustrations and the
illustration captions have not been rectified, but the list has been
corrected to correspond with the book (see under Changes below).
Depending on the hard- and software used and their settings, not all
elements may display as intended. Adjusting the zoom factor may
improve the looks and legibility of some elements (illustrations and
tables in particular).
Page 8, "indebtedness or aid in the preparation of this book":
possibly an error for "... for aid ...".
Page 73, “several ladies of great quality ...: the closing quote mark
is missing.
Page 180, "steel sheathing": as printed in the source document.
Page 298, "Therefore a large importation ... so to speak": part of the
sentence appears to be missing.
Page 378, "in respect of the conditions or changes of traffic": as
printed in the source document. The treaty itself reads "... charges
of traffic ...".
Page 386, "a vessel from Liverpool to Hamburg to the Panama Canal":
possibly this should read "... from Liverpool or Hamburg ...".
Page 388, table: the data for 1925 do not add up to the total given.
Changes made
Some obvious minor typographical and punctuation errors and misprints
have been corrected silently.
Illustrations and tables have been moved out of text paragraphs. Some
tables have been re-arranged or split in order to fit the available
width.
Illustration numbers have been added to the lists of illustrations.
Page 4, "Entrance to Bouquette Valley": page number 350 changed to
353, and entry moved to appropriate place in list. Entries 588 and 589
have been replaced with the captions of the illustrations as present
in the source document. The original entries were as follows: One Step
Upward from a Palm-Thatched Hut, 405; Bird’s-Eye View of the Panama
Canal, 405. The last six entries have also been replaced with the
illustration captions as present in the source document. The original
entries were as follows: The Brook at Taboga, 408; One of the Smaller
Slides, 408; Giant Steam Mixers, 409; Machinery Wrecked by a Slide,
410; The Great Falls of Chorrera, 411; A Twentieth Century Liner
Locking, 412.
Page 36: "Goethal’s" changed to "Goethals’".
Page 40: "MANGOES" changed to "MANGROVES" (also in List of
Illustrations).
Page 42: "... bought for a song those who had ..." changed to "...
bought for a song. Those who had ...".
Page 90: "Camboa" changed to "Gamboa".
Page 102: "Goethal’s" changed to "Goethals’".
Page 164: caption "BIG GUNS FOR CANAL DEFENCE" inserted.
Page 173: Illustrations II and III have been placed in numerical
order; the List of Illustrations has been adjusted accordingly.
Page 192: "espanol" changed to "español".
Page 239: "our national capital" changed to "our national capitol".
Page 280: "Wherefore, why work?" changed to "Therefore, why work?".
Page 283: "A FORD NEAR ANTON" changed to "A FORD NEAR ANCON".
Page 291: "Limon and Bocos del Toro" changed to "Limon and Bocas del
Toro".
Page 292: "Bocos del Toro (the Mouths of the Bull)" changed to "Bocas
del Toro (the Mouths of the Bull)".
Page 308: "THE CHURCH AT ANTON" changed to "THE CHURCH AT ANCON".
Page 315: "Nargana" changed to "Narganá".
Page 318: "men like Esquemelin" changed to "men like Esquemeling".
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Panama and the Canal in Picture and Prose" ***
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