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Title: Panama and the Canal in Picture and Prose

Author: Willis J. Abbot

Release date: February 6, 2021 [eBook #64476]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PANAMA AND THE CANAL
IN PICTURE AND PROSE ***

Please see the Transcriber’s Notes at the end of
this text.
The cover image has been created for this e-text
and is in the public domain.

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.

Larger map (1 MB)

PA N A M A
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 172
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

anama. They say the word means “a place of many fishes,” but there is some
P 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.

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.

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.

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.”

RUINS OF OLD PANAMA

CHAPTER I
THE FRONT DOOR TO PANAMA

he 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

JAMAICA, WHERE MOTORING IS GOOD

Copyright, 1913, by F. E. Wright
DUKE ST REET, KI NG STO N, J AM AI CA
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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

olon 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.

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.

TORO POINT BREAKWATER
Before its construction northers often made the harbor of Colon untenable for ships

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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!’”

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.

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.

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.

THE ATLANTIC FLEET VISITS THE ISTHMUS

Mr. Tracy Robinson, a charming chronicler of the events of a lifetime on
the Isthmus, says of this period: “From the time that operations were well
under way until the end, the state of things was like the life at ‘Red Hoss
Mountain’ described by Eugene Field:
‘When the money flowed like likker....
With the joints all throwed wide open, and no sheriff to demur.’

Vice flourished. Gambling of every kind and every other form of
wickedness were common day and night. The blush of shame became
practically unknown.”
The De Lesseps house stands at what has been the most picturesque point
in the American town of Cristobal. Before it stands a really admirable work
of art, Columbus in the attitude of a protector toward a half-nude Indian
maiden who kneels at his side. After the fashion of a world largely
indifferent to art the name of the sculptor has been lost, but the statue was

cast in Turin, for Empress Eugénie, who gave it to the Republic of
Colombia when the French took up the Canal work. Buffeted from site to
site, standing for awhile betwixt the tracks in a railroad freight yard, the
spot on which it stood when viewed by the writer is sentimentally ideal, for
it overlooks the entrance to the Canal and under the eyes of the Great
Navigator, done in bronze, the ships of all the world will pass and repass as
they enter or leave the artificial strait which gives substance to the
Spaniard’s dream.

ROOSEVELT AVENUE, CRISTOBAL, ABOUT TO LOSE ITS BEAUTY

At one time the quarters of the Canal employees—the gold employees as
those above the grade of day laborers are called—were in one of the most
beautiful streets imaginable. In a long sweeping curve from the border line
between the two towns, they extended in an unbroken row facing the
restless blue waters of the Caribbean. A broad white drive and a row of
swaying cocoanut trees separated the houses from the water. The sea here is
always restless, surging in long billows and breaking in white foam upon

the shore, unlike the Pacific which is usually calm. Unlike the Pacific, too,
the tide is inconsiderable. At Panama it rises and falls from seventeen to
twenty feet, and, retiring, leaves long expanses of unsightly mud flats, but
the Caribbean always plays its part in the landscape well. Unhappily this
picturesque street—called Roosevelt Avenue—is about to lose its beauty,
for its water front is to be taken for the great new docks, and already at
some points one sees the yellow stacks of ocean liners mingling with the
fronded tops of the palms.
Cristobal is at the present time the site of the great cold storage plant of
the Canal Zone, the shops of the Panama Railroad and the storage
warehouses in which are kept the supplies for the commissary stores at the
different villages along the line of the Canal. It possesses a fine fire fighting
force, a Y. M. C. A. club, a commissary hotel, and along the water front of
Colon proper are the hospital buildings erected by the French but still
maintained. Many of the edifices extend out over the water and the constant
breeze ever blowing through their wide netted balconies would seem to be
the most efficient of allies in the fight against disease. One finds less
distinct separation between the native and the American towns at this end of
the railroad than at Panama-Ancon. This is largely due to the fact that a
great part of the site of Colon is owned by the Panama Railroad, which in
turn is owned by the United States, so that the activities of our government
extend into the native town more than at Panama. In the latter city the hotel,
the hospital and the commissary are all on American or Canal Zone soil—at
Colon they are within the sovereignty of the Republic of Panama.

THE DE LESSEPS PALACE

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.

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.

“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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Copyright, 1913, F. E. Wright.
G O I NG TO M ARKET

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.

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.

CHILDISH BEAUTY WITHOUT ART

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.

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.

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.

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

ithin 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.

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.

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.

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:

BULLOCK CART ON THE SAVANNA ROAD

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.

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.”

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!”

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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
Photo T. J. Marine. Comagre were received 4000
FAMILY TRAVEL ON THE PANAMA TRAIL 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?”

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

NATIVE BRIDGE IN THE DARIEN

“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
Copyright, 1912, National Geographic quaintly of seeking lodgings during
Magazine, Washington, D. C. the fair:
Photo by Henry Pittier
“When I came into the Haven I
CHOCO INDIAN GIRLS was sorry to see that as yet the
Note the toes. With them they pick up the smallest
objects 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.”

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.

COUNTRY BACK OF PORTO BELLO

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!

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.
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, A LADY OF THE
suffered more severely and their captain, wounded SAVANNA
and abandoned in the forest, was put to death by
the Spaniards with certain of their favorite
methods of torture.
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
NATIVE CHILDREN, PANAMA
PROVINCE 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.

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:

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.

A CUNA-CUNA FAMILY NEAR PORTO BELLO

COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT
A NAT I VE VI L L AG E
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.”

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.

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.”

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

wo 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.

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

MOUTH OF THE CHAGRES RIVER
San Lorenzo stands on the brow of the cliff. The watch tower may be seen faintly uplifted

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

ON THE UPPER CHAGRES

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.”
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 NATIVE PANAMA
were picked off by the WOMAN
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
A CHARACTER OF COLON 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.

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 WOMAN OF THE CHAGRES REGION
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

he 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:

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.

CASA REALE OR KING’S HOUSE
Its heavy walls show that it was planned for defense but the Spaniards abandoned it

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- Photo by Burtis & Elliott
hearted had fled. THE RUINED TOWER OF SAN AUGUSTINE
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:
“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,
WAYSIDE SHRINE ON THE SAVANNA ROAD
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:

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.

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.

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.

IN THE CRYPT OF OLD SAN AUGUSTINE

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
A WOMAN OF OLD PANAMA 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.

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:

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.”

BREAKING WAVES AT OLD PANAMA

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 OLD BELL AT REMEDIOS, 1682
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.

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.

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.

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.

“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

he 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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

COPYRIGHT. 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT
O L D F RENCH CANAL AT M O UNT HO PE
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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

OVERWHELMED BY THE JUNGLE

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.

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.

THE POWER OF THE JUNGLE
Note how the tree has grown around and into this steel dump car at San Pablo

LA FOLIE DINGLER
This house, built by the French for $150,000, was sold for $25.00 by the Americans

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.

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.

AN OLD SPANISH CHURCH
This edifice, still standing at Nata, is said to be the oldest church in Panama

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.”

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.

Photo by Underwood & Underwood
THE ANCON HOSPITAL GROUNDS
The beauty of the grounds is due to early French planning

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.

A dinner was given M. Henri
Boinne, secretary-general of the
company. Some one remarked that
there were thirteen at the table, A ZONE WORKING VILLAGE
whereupon the guest of honor The low houses were built by the French: all
remarked gaily that as he was the last screening added by Americans
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.

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.

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.

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

he 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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT
ANCO N HI L L F RO M HARBO R O F PANAM A
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.

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.

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.

Photo by Prof. Lutz
NATIVE HOUSE AND GROUP AT PUERTA PINAS

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Courtesy Scientific American
THE “SPOIL” FROM CULEBRA CUT WOULD DO THIS

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

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

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

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

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

RANGE TOWER AT PACIFIC ENTRANCE

vines once bright with green foliage and brilliant flowers, now gray and
dead like the parent trunk. Only the orchids and the air plants will continue
to give some slight hint of life to the dull gray monotony of death. For a
time, too, it must be expected that the atmosphere will be as offensive as the
scene is depressing, for it has been found that the tropical foliage in rotting
gives out a most penetrating and disagreeable odor. The scientists have

determined to their own satisfaction that it is not prejudicial to health, but
the men who have been working in the camps near the shores of the rising
lake declare it emphatically destructive of comfort.
The unfortunate trees are drowned. Plunging their roots beneath the
waters causes their death as infallibly, but not so quickly, as to fill a man’s
lungs with the same fluid brings on his end. The Canal Commission has not
been oblivious to the disadvantages, both aesthetic and practical, of this
great body of dead timber standing in the lake, but it has found the cost of
removing it prohibitive. Careful estimates fix the total expense for doing
quickly what nature will do gratis in time at $2,000,000. The many small
inlets and backwaters of the lake moreover will afford breeding places for
the mosquitos and other pestilent insects which the larvacide man with his
can and pump can never reach, and no earthly ingenuity can wholly purify.

BIRD’S EYE VIEW OF PEDRO MIGUEL LOCKS

One vegetable phenomenon of the lake, now exceedingly common, will
persist for some time after the ocean-going steamers begin to ply those

waters, namely the floating islands. These range from a few feet to several
acres in extent, and are formed by portions of the spongy bed of the lake
being broken away by the action of the water, and carried off by the current,
or the winds acting upon the aquatic plants on the surface. They gradually
assume a size and consistency that will make them, if not combated, a
serious menace to navigation. At present the sole method of dealing with
them is to tow them down to the dam and send them over the spillway, but
some more speedy and efficacious method is yet to be devised. However as
the trees now standing fall and disintegrate, and the actual shores of the lake
recede further from the canal the islands will become fewer, and the space
in which they can gather without impediment to navigation greater. Another
menace to a clear channel which has put in an appearance is the water
hyacinth which has practically destroyed the navigability of streams in
Florida and Louisiana. Conditions in Gatun Lake are ideal for it and the
officials are studying methods of checking its spread from the very
beginning.

Photo by Critchlow
THE VEGETABLE MARTYRS
The trees in the district flooded by Gatun Lake are being slowly drowned and will finally disappear

The waters of the lake cover 164 square miles and are at points eighty-
five feet deep. In the main this vast expanse of water, one of the largest of
artificial reservoirs, containing about 183 billion cubic feet of water, is
supplied by the Chagres River, though several smaller streams add to its

volume. Before the dam was built two or three score yards measured the
Chagres at its widest point. Now the waters are backed up into the interior
far beyond the borders of the Canal Zone, along the course of every little
waterway that flowed into the Chagres, and busy launches may ply above
the sites of buried Indian towns. The towns themselves will not be
submerged, for the cane and palm-thatched huts will float away on the
rising tide. Indeed from the ships little sign of native life will appear, unless
it be Indians in cayucas making their way to market. For the announced
policy of the government is to depopulate the Zone. All the Indian rights to
the soil have been purchased and the inhabitants remorselessly ordered to
move out beyond the five-mile strip on either side of the canal. This is
unfortunate as it will rob the trip of what might have been a scenic feature,
for the Indians love to build their villages near the water, which is in fact
their principal highway, and but for this prohibition would probably rebuild
as near the sites of their obliterated towns as the waters would permit.
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

merican 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.

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.

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.

A WALK AT ANCON

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.

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.

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.

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.

COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT

T HE WASHI NG PL ACE AT TABO G A
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.

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:

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

he 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”.

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.

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

Photo by Underwood & Underwood

RAILWAY STATION AT GATUN
The Panama Railroad is being equipped with stations and rolling stock of the first-class

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.

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.

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”.

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”.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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

ntering 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.

ENTRANCE TO GATUN LOCKS
The rafts in the foreground carry pipes through which suction dredges discharge material removed

I. COLON: THESE PICTURES IN ORDER FORM A PANORAMA OF THE COLON WATER
FRONT

II. COLON: PART OF THE RESIDENTIAL DISTRICT ON THE WATER FRONT

III. COLON: PANAMA RAILROAD AND ROYAL MAIL DOCKS

IV. COLON: THE DE LESSEPS HOUSE IN THE DISTANCE SHOWS LOCATION OF NEW
DOCKS
Complete panorama (1 MB)

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.

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.

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.

Photo by Thompson
GATUN LAKE SEEN FROM THE DAM

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.

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

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:

COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT
A NAT I VE 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.

GATUN UPPER LOCK

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.”

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.

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.

Photo by Underwood & Underwood
THE GIANT PENSTOCKS OF THE SPILLWAY

THE SPILLWAY AT HIGH WATER
A comparison with the picture on page 179 will show the varying stages of the river

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.

THE WATER KNOCKING AT GATUN GATES

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.

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.

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.

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.

DIAGRAM OF LOCK-GATE MACHINERY

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.

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.

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

hat 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