IV The Panama Canal
When, in New York, I was handed a sailing-list of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company’s boats, I observed that their first port of call, after Jamaica, was Colon. In vain I hurriedly searched the map of the Caribbean Sea, hoping to disguise my ignorance. I had to pocket my pride, and inquire, “Where is Colon?” Afterwards I discovered that Colon was a place of which I had often heard under its earlier name of Aspinwall; for my father, one of the Californian Argonauts, had twice crossed the Isthmus of Darien in the old days.
Under no conceivable name would Colon be an attractive place. It is situated on flat ground (formerly an island) at the bottom of a little bag of a bay; it consists of the ordinary jerry-built two-storey houses of a more or less improvised tropical sea-port; its fringe of palms is meagre and mangy; and it is backed by low and featureless wooded hills.
But, as we steam slowly up to the jetty, what is this cluster of some twenty or thirty neat new houses, under a grove of palm-trees away to the right? There is something odd about them, something dark and blind-looking; they seem to have neither windows nor doors. After a little searching of spirit, I realize what they suggest to me—they are like a row of giant meat-safes.
And there, at the point of the spit of land, is a statue—a group of two figures. Now I know where I am, for I have been reading things up a little. This must be the statue of Columbus embracing an Indian maiden, presented by the Empress Eugénie in the palmy days of French ambition regarding the Isthmus; and the houses behind it must be those of the American officials in the settlement of Cristobal, a suburb of Colon.
One soon learns to appreciate the “screened” houses of the Canal Zone, with their verandahs enclosed in an impervious veil of wire gauze. But outwardly, and especially at a distance, they are not things of beauty.
Three minutes in the broiling streets of Colon were quite enough for me. I have seen frontier settlements before now; and Colon, though it has a sort of a history, is at present, to all intents and purposes, a frontier settlement. “Do you know Port Said?” a resident said to me; “Well, this place is just about 50 per cent. wickeder.” I think the resident (with pardonable partiality) exaggerated a little; but the aspect of Colon, even by day, was quite sufficiently sinister.
Besides, I had an important introduction to present at Panama; so I took the first train thither. This railway, or at any rate a railway more or less on the line of this one, was built in the ’fifties, and is said to have cost a life for every tie (Anglice, sleeper). Literal-minded persons question this statement; to me it seems entirely probable. For if ever there was a pestiferous-looking region, it is this land of swamp and jungle and blood-red river. Though I knew that science had practically annulled the evil spell that had so long rested on it, there were still places which I could scarcely look at without a shudder.
Of course the Canal works, and the settlements of the workers, give an air of great animation to many points on the line. But apart from these I saw not a single sign of life on the whole route; not a square inch of cultivation, not a man or woman who looked like a peasant of the region; only a few undaunted cattle browsing here and there in the swamps. And every here and there, to add to the desolation, lay great pieces of machinery—travelling cranes, trucks, even engines—overturned by the wayside and half submerged in jungle. They were relics of the French fiasco, the abandoned impedimenta of De Lesseps’ Moscow. I have seen few more tragic spectacles.
Here let me say, however, that intelligent Americans speak with great respect of their French predecessors. “Consider the difficulties they had to deal with,” a high official said to me—“difficulties that we have had practically swept away for us! They knew nothing of tropical hygiene, and malaria and yellow fever had it all their own way with them. They knew nothing of cold storage, and the problem of supply was practically insoluble. Considering all these circumstances, it is wonderful what they did, and did well. If it bears a small proportion to the £50,000,000, more or less, that were sunk in the enterprise, you must remember that probably not half that sum of money ever got to the Isthmus. Their material was all excellent. We use a considerable amount of it to this day. We have dug many of their locomotives out of the jungle, and found them practically as good as new. When we took over the business, there was a great outcry over the £8,000,000 we paid to the French Company. People said it was grossly extravagant; but we have found that the bargain was a good one.” Despite all alteration of plans, I gather that about half the excavation actually made by the French has proved, or will prove, useful.
As one leaves the station at Panama, one fears that it is to prove a second Colon. |A Sanitary Campaign.| Here are the same two-storey shanties, half of them, it would seem, drinking-bars, and the other half miscellaneous stores, kept by the ubiquitous Ah Sin and Wong Lee. But after half a mile or so of this Hispano-Americano-Chinatown, the Avenida Central leads one into the moderately old and not quite uninteresting Spanish city, with its Plaza, its twin-towered Cathedral, and its fort. And when you get to the fort, you find yourself on the central promontory of one of the most beautiful bays in the world; but of this more anon, from another point of view.
The towns of Panama and Colon are specially excluded from the Canal Zone—the strip of territory extending five miles on each side of the Canal, which the United States has bought from the Republic of Panama for £2,000,000. But even in these two towns the Americans have undertaken the work of paving and sanitation; the outlay to be repaid by instalments extending over fifty years. So they have repeated here the drastic cleaning-up which they have effected in Havana, even outraging the feelings of the natives by abolishing the domestic rain-water butt, the breeding-place of the “Anopheles” and “Stegomyia” mosquitos—disseminators, respectively of malaria and yellow fever. It is mainly, though of course not entirely, by waging war upon these insects that the now almost perfect sanitation of the Canal Zone has been secured. And it is in order to exclude them from the happy home that all the I.C.C.—Isthmian Canal Commission—houses are “screened” with wire gauze.
To one of these houses, in the suburb of Ancon, I drove in the early afternoon, and presented my introduction, which was honoured with true American cordiality. Once within the gauze fortification (and the door shuts behind you with a spring, lest you should inadvertently admit a casual Anopheles) you find yourself in a delightfully arranged tropical house, with dining-room and drawing-room opening off a central hall, and with the spacious verandah affording what is equivalent to another suite of rooms. It is built entirely of hardwood, painted in white and shades of green, and is as cool and airy as heart can desire. From within, the “screen” is scarcely noticeable; in the normal Panama weather, indeed, it merely softens agreeably the glare of the sun outside.
“Is this,” I asked, “the famous house that was built in some incredibly short space of time?”
“Yes,” said my host, laughing. “That story has got around a good deal, but it has the merit of being true. When the house was begun, I saw that the workmen were simply dilly-dallying over it and making no way. I spoke to our chief, Colonel Goethals, about it, and he came over and looked at the preparations, so far as they had gone. He said to the overseer: ‘This house must be finished and ready for occupation on the 15th of November’—just six weeks ahead. The overseer pulled a very long face, and said, ‘I’ll do my best, sir.’ ‘That was not my order,’ said Colonel Goethals. ‘I did not tell you to do your best—I told you to have the house finished.’ And finished it was, in just thirty-six working days.”
After taking me for a most interesting drive in the environs of Ancon, my host was compelled, by a previous engagement, to leave me to myself for the rest of the evening. |“A Peak in Darien.”| I did the obvious thing, which was to climb Ancon Hill at sunset. To do so you have first to wind your way through the beautifully situated hospital buildings, all, of course, carefully screened in gauze. Straying a little from the proper road, I came across a lumber-yard, outside of which I was a little startled to find a pile of some fifty coffins of assorted sizes. These, too, might, I thought, have been “screened” without disadvantage to the spirits of the community.
A stiff climb of about half an hour brought me to the top of Ancon Hill, and disclosed one of the loveliest views I have ever seen. Immediately below lay the town of Panama on its promontory. To the left a huge bay curved outward, with a magnificent sweep, and beyond it range on range of mountains grew ever dimmer and more distant as they faded away into South America. To the right of Panama lay the smaller bay of La Boca, in which the canal will actually debouch, studded with beautiful mountainous islands, not at all unlike those of the bay of Naples, on a smaller scale. It was a glorious scene; and a white American cruiser lying out in the anchorage gave a pleasant touch of life to it.
Observe that I have said “to the left” and “to the right” of Panama, not to the south and to the north; for the orientation here is extremely puzzling. I naturally expected to see the sun set over the Pacific; but, to my great surprise, there seemed to be no sun in the heavens in that direction. Yet the light proved that a sunset was going on somewhere; and, turning inland, I found the luminary engaged in sinking behind the mountains of the Isthmus—to the eastward it seemed to me. A study of a large-scale map may show the reason for this paradox—I shall not attempt to expound it.
The Isthmian Canal Commission has built and runs a delightful tropical hotel at Ancon, called—heaven knows why—the Tivoli. |The Tivoli Hotel.| Even the negro waiters wear at their belt the brazen badges or checks showing their numbers on the I.C.C. pay-list. Salaries are paid to numbers, not to names. Many of the labourers have no ascertainable, or no spellable, name; many change their names as the fancy strikes them; but their badge identifies them at once.
The telephone in my bedroom rang at 5.30 the next morning, for I had to catch a train at 6.35 to meet my Ancon friend at Culebra, several stations down the line. On the way, I saw a gang of black convicts working at an embankment. The black and white stripes of their trousers were conspicuous: less conspicuous the chain attaching one leg of each man to a large bullet. A negro in khaki uniform stood sentry over them with fixed bayonet.
There is, it appears, surprisingly little serious crime in the Zone. There are three district judges, who, sitting in banc, form a supreme court. Trial by jury has recently been introduced, on the theory that the Constitution follows the flag. Two cases have been tried by jury: in the first a white man was acquitted who ought (said my informant) to have been found guilty; in the second, a negro was (justly) convicted with promptitude and despatch.
After breakfast at the delightful house of one of the officials at Culebra, my kind cicerone and I sallied forth to visit the famous Culebra Cut. But, while waiting for our motor to appear, he showed me two of the characteristic institutions of the Zone.
A Club House.
The first was an I.C.C. Club House—a spacious and admirably arranged recreation-home, containing a library, reading and writing rooms, billiard-room, gymnasium, skittle alley, and theatre for amateur performances and minstrel shows.
“The great enemy we have to fight,” said my friend, “is not the climate, and still less disease, but the monotony of the life. You cannot get good work out of discontented and homesick people—you cannot even retain their services. So it has been one of our most essential tasks to organize amusements, and make the leisure time of our people agreeable. This Culebra club-house is one of four already built, at the cost of about £7000 apiece. The others are at Empire, Gorgona, and Cristobal; and we have four or five more in contemplation.”
“And to whom are the club-houses open?”
“To all Gold Employees; and the dues are only one dollar a month.”
The Gold Employee means, on the face of it, the man or woman whose salary is calculated in United States currency, while the Silver Employee is the labourer, white or black, who works at so much an hour, calculated in the currency of Panama, in which a dollar is equal to just half the American or gold dollar. But to all intents and purposes, so far as I could make out, the Gold Employee is the white American, the Silver Employee is everybody else. There are 6000 American employees of the Commission; and, counting officials of the Panama Railway and women and children, there are altogether about 12,000 Americans on the Zone. The total number of employees varies considerably, but is somewhere about 40,000.
The second institution to which my friend introduced me was a Commissary Store, of which there are half a dozen in the Zone. In this large and roomy building commodities of every description are dispensed to employees of the Commission. I say dispensed, for nothing is bought for money. |A Socialistic Store.| Everything is paid for by coupons various values, issued to employees alone—the object being to ensure that none but they shall benefit by the institution. As the region is almost wholly unproductive, everything has to be imported from New York, New Orleans, and other points of the United States, from one to two thousand miles distant—the “perishables” being handled by a magnificent system of cold storage. As everything is supplied virtually at cost price, the Canal employee on the average pays for what he consumes rather less than he would in New York.
“But, my dear sir,” I said, as we left the Commissary Store, “this is sheer unmitigated State Socialism.”
“I know it,” he replied, “but I have always thought that Socialism under Carlyle’s ’benevolent despot’ would be no bad thing. And we flatter ourselves that, in the I.C.C., the benevolent despot has, for once, been discovered.”
Our motor had by this time appeared—a motor running on the railroad—and we set off. |The Culebra Cut.| First we ran down the ordinary passenger track to Las Cascadas; and there, by means of an ingenious portable turntable, we faced about and got ourselves switched on to rails leading to the Cut. Times out of number had our motor-man to jump off and turn the points so as to run us into a siding while some huge “dirt train” rumbled past. The rule is that everything must give place to a “business” train. Only for the President of the United States was the line cleared.
Up in the North, an old soldier of the Union, now one of the most delightful of scholars and critics—why should I not name Professor Lounsbury?—had said to me, “I thought that the charge of Pickett’s Brigade, on the third day at Gettysburg, was the greatest sight that I ever had seen or would see; but the Culebra Cut really rivalled it.” I was curious to see where any analogy could lie between two such disparate spectacles; and, frankly, I could find it only in the cannonade of dynamite through which we had occasionally to run. But unquestionably the Cut is a wonderful spectacle, a tremendous demonstration of human and mechanical energy.
It is simply the transformation of a mountain into a valley. Imagine all the biggest railway cuttings you have ever seen ranged into a sort of giant stairway, along the two sides of a great prism-shaped valley; and imagine all these cuttings, at a dozen different levels, being daily and hourly deepened by an army of machines and men. The activity is enormous. Here we have whole companies of drills of various kinds boring the rock to be charged with dynamite; a little farther on we pause at a given signal, and presently come five or six detonations, one after the other, like a sharp discharge of artillery. The usual charge is about three hundred pounds; but on one occasion twenty-three tons were used in a single explosion, to blow away a whole hillside. When the ground has been loosened, or “fired,” as they call it, along comes that mammoth earth-eater, the steam-shovel, with its attendant train of dirt-cars, digs its shining steel teeth into the hillside, and munches it up at the rate of five cubic yards to a mouthful. These giant mouthfuls it spits out again one by one into the flat “Lidgertwood” cars on the adjoining track, five or six mouthfuls (I forget the exact number), constituting a carload. The train of some fifteen cars is, in fact, a long platform on wheels; for iron aprons join car to car and make the platform continuous. The cars, moreover, have but one side, so that, when the train arrives at the dumping-ground, a sort of steam plough is dragged by a cable along its whole length, and its huge burden of rock and soil is discharged in a very few minutes. For another consistency of soil, a tilting form of dirt-car is used. In short, no possible time- or labour-saving device is neglected. Even the shifting of temporary railway tracks, which is constantly required, is effected by a machine, which lifts whole sections of rails and “ties,” and deposits them in their new location.
Along the whole length of the Cut we made our way, zig-zagging from level to level. |Engineering Difficulties.| When we were in the very bottom of the “prism,” and the two sides of the eviscerated mountain were towering above us, I inquired what was to be the ultimate surface level of the water, and found that the surface level had not yet been reached by many feet.
For about half its length, the Canal will not have the aspect of a canal at all, but of a great lake. The low lands of the northern side of the Isthmus are to be entirely flooded by the damming at Gatun of the Chagres river. This lake-reservoir will have a surface area of about one hundred and ten square miles, and will serve as a regulator of the water supply. For instance, such a sudden rainfall as would cause the Chagres river to rise thirty-five feet in twenty-four hours, will raise the water in the dam only about three inches.
It is whispered in Colon that there is still one great engineering difficulty in the way of the enterprise, and that is to find an adequate foundation for the huge Gatun Dam. Whether such a difficulty exists I cannot say, but, if it does, I am very sure it will be overcome. Croakers also declare that it is well known that the proposed width of the locks at Gatun and La Boca (100 feet) will be quite inadequate for the greater Dreadnoughts and Lusitanias of the future, but that the engineers dare not tackle a larger “proposition.” These are very likely the idlest of rumours. The quidnuncs of Colon do not observe the admirable resolution adopted by the Cristobal Women’s Club, namely, “That every club-woman in the Canal Zone constitute herself a committee of one to foster favourable instead of adverse criticism of the conditions of the Zone and of the Isthmus of Panama.”
A Triumph of Organization.
We had just dodged our way through the Cut, when the eleven o’clock whistle sounded, and work ceased for the “noon hour” of eleven to one, essential in this climate. We were thus enabled to make a pretty clear run into Panama. A recent rainfall had left some standing water along the line, and wherever we saw a pool we saw, too, a negro treating it with a can of crude petroleum. The mosquito has indeed a poor time of it in the domain of the I.C.C.
Regretfully I bade my hosts farewell and took the 5.30 train for Colon. As the twilight fell, about midway across the Isthmus, I saw, on the same patch of green, one set of negroes playing baseball, and another set playing cricket. The latter were, of course, Jamaicans, asserting their privileges as citizens of the British Empire. This, I am told, they are very apt to do, in and out of season. The moment they consider their dignity outraged, their retort is, “Let me tell you, sah, I am a British subject.” And, truly, for men of their hue, it is better to be British subjects than American citizens.
It was at Colon, the same evening, that I heard those questionings as to the engineering success of the Canal which I have recorded above. Neither of its scientific nor of its political aspects do I profess to judge; but I am much mistaken if the organization of the enterprise be not an achievement of which America has good reason to be proud.