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Birdseye Views of Far Lands

<h2>CHAPTER XXVI</h2> <h3>The World's Great Crossroad—Panama Canal</h3> Perhaps the greatest achievement of history, both in length of time of construction and in service to humanity, stands to the credit of the United States. The Panama Canal was dug in less time than it took to build the causeway in Egypt to get the stone from the quarries to where it was wanted for the big pyramid. This canal, too, is wholly an American achievement. It was planned by American brains, constructed by American engineers and with American machinery, and paid for with American gold, and every American has great reason to be proud of it. We paid the Republic of Panama ten million dollars for the lease on the zone through which the canal passes, and are now paying the same government two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per year to keep them in a good humor. We bought the ground again from individual owners and have agreed to pay Colombia twenty-five million dollars to keep her from raising a racket. We paid the French forty million dollars for the work they did and the machinery they left so the whole thing, lock, stock and barrel, ought to be ours without any question. It was published on supposedly good authority that some of the machinery we used was purchased from Belgium, that we could not make it in America. While visiting Mr. P. B. Banton, the chief office engineer, some time ago I asked him about this and he said the only machinery Belgium furnished was to the French. We tried to repair and use part of this but it had to be discarded entirely. We purchased two gigantic cranes to use in the work from Germany, but one of them collapsed and both had to be rebuilt by American machinists before they would do the work they were guaranteed to do. The only parts used in the canal that were not made in America, according to Mr. Banton, are some gigantic screws which were made in Sweden. It so happened at that time that Sweden was the only country that had machinery to make such screws, and while we could have easily constructed such machinery, it was cheaper to get them from Sweden and this was done. After making this statement, Mr. Banton got the drawings and explained them, and later on I saw some of them in the Gatun-Locks. If I remember correctly they are about eight inches in diameter and forty or fifty feet long. Speaking of drawings and blue prints this official said: "There are more than eighty thousand drawings in this one room." Of course, the original blue prints and complicated drawings of the canal are sealed up in a great bomb-proof vault, kept dry by electricity. Although I had passed through the canal on a ship and rode up and down it on the train it was only after talking an hour with this engineer and then going into the control station tower and watching boats taken through the Gatun lock system, going into the tunnels below and watching the gigantic cog wheels and wonderful machinery, that I began to appreciate the real ingenuity and brain work of this colossal achievement. On his last voyage to the new world Columbus visited Panama and was told by the Indians that beyond a narrow strip of land was the "Big Water." He sailed up the Chagres river a distance, failed to find it, and died believing that they were mistaken. About ten years later Balboa climbed to the top of a tree not far from where Culebra Cut is located and saw the "Big Water." Four hundred years later almost to the day the water was turned into the canal and thus America united the world's greatest oceans. After completing the Suez Canal and thus uniting the world's greatest seas, the French people believed they could dig across the Isthmus of Panama, but digging through Culebra Cut thousands of miles from home was much different from digging across the level plain of Suez only a few hundred miles away. A canal without locks is entirely different from one where great ocean liners must be lifted eighty-five feet above sea level. Then Panama was a jungle, where disease-carrying mosquitoes were swarming in districts where heat was almost unbearable. True, their medical skill was the best and their hospitals of the latest design, but where they cured hundreds thousands died like flies. Added to all these disadvantages was extravagance and waste, greed and graft, mismanagement and misappropriation of funds to say nothing of palaces and princely salaries for officials. The result was that after spending more than two hundred million dollars of the people's money, the whole scheme collapsed, and the work stopped. De Lesseps himself was arrested, disgraced, and imprisoned and died with a broken heart a little later in an insane asylum. The French had worked seven years, and now for four years not a wheel turned. Then they organized a new company and worked at intervals ten years more until 1903, when we bought them out. During these years a half dozen nations developed projects and made surveys but no digging was done except by the French until we took charge in 1904. The Canal Zone is a strip of land ten miles wide across the Isthmus of Panama, the distance being about forty miles from shore to shore. It is less than this, however, in a straight line. The canal runs from northwest to southeast, the Atlantic end at the north being about twenty-two miles west of the Pacific end at the south. This seems rather strange but we must remember that the Isthmus is in the shape of the letter S and it so happens that the shortest point runs in the direction named. Of course it would have been impossible for us to have dug the canal without a tremendous loss of life had it not been for the advance of medical science. Until we took charge this was one of the worst fever-infested districts on the globe. But just about this time it was discovered that the mosquito carries the germ of yellow fever and other contagious diseases. These pests breed in stagnant water and it was discovered that kerosene on the water forms a film on the surface that means death to the newborn mosquito. Then began one of the greatest battles of all history, the fight to eradicate the mosquito pest. Colonel Gorgas had charge of the forces and he was determined to do the job well. Tracts of the jungle were burned over, ditches to drain stagnant pools were dug, and every barrel was looked after. Hundreds of Negroes with oil cans sprayed almost every nook and corner of the Zone with kerosene. Houses were screened, every case of sickness was looked after, and the result was soon manifest. A mighty victory was won by Gorgas and today the Canal Zone is as healthful as any tropical country on earth. Of course, people criticized and joked about the mosquito brigade, but the colonel went ahead pouring oil upon the water, cleaning up filth, and compelling sanitary measures, paying not the slightest attention to the harping critics. At the north end of the Zone are the cities of Cristobal and Colon, the latter in Panama. The fact is they are practically one city, the railroad being the dividing line. While Cristobal is clean and beautiful much of Colon is dirty and rum soaked. Somebody said to me: "Colon is that part of the city where you can buy a drink," and it sure looks it. While it is only about forty miles across the isthmus yet the canal is fifty miles long. The fact is they had to dredge out to deep water which is about five miles at each end. Entering the channel at the north it is about seven miles to the Gatun locks. There are three pairs of these locks and they lift the vessel to Gatun Lake, which is eighty-five feet above sea level. It is twenty-four miles across this lake to Culebra Cut, which extends about nine miles through the hills, and to the first lock on the Pacific side. This lock lowers the ship about thirty feet to Miraflores Lake, which is a little more than a mile in length. Here are two pairs of locks which lowers the ship to sea level and then it is about eight miles or a little more to deep water. Counting all the distance occupied by the locks we have the fifty miles. Gatun Lake was made by a great dam across the Chagres river. This dam is a stupendous piece of work, being a half mile wide at the bottom, a mile and a half long, and more than one hundred feet high. A gigantic spillway allows the surface water to run over. During the dry season, about four months, the river does not supply enough water to run the locks so Gatun Lake must furnish the supply. This lake at present covers one hundred and sixty-four square miles, and last year it was lowered five feet during the dry season. The land has been purchased for the extension of the lake and the great spillway can be raised twenty feet higher if necessary so that a shortage of water is practically impossible. Each lock in the canal is a thousand feet long, one hundred and ten feet wide, and the average height about thirty feet, so they hold a tremendous amount of water. Every ship passing through empties two lock chambers full of water into the ocean at each end. It is an interesting fact that at the Atlantic the tide only makes a difference of two and a half feet, at the Pacific side the difference is more than twenty feet. While the low lock gates at the Atlantic side are sixty-four feet high the low lock gates at the Pacific side are eighty-two feet high. I was permitted to go into the control station tower at the Gatun lock system and see three ships taken through, also into the tunnels below to see the machinery in operation and it is a sight never to be forgotten. To take a ship through these locks the operator sets in motion twice ninety-eight gigantic electric motors and it is all done without an audible word being spoken. Every possible emergency has been provided for. Could an enemy ship by any manner of means get into the canal and undertake to ram the gates it would be helpless as far as any damage is concerned. Mighty chains guard the gates and it is impossible to get the gates closed without these chains being raised to their places. Emergency gates are provided so the water can all be shut off, the locks emptied and repairs made in the bottoms of the lock chambers, if necessary. At the continental divide the Culebra Cut is almost five hundred feet deep and more than a half mile wide at the top. The channel itself is three hundred feet wide and forty-five feet deep. There have been half a hundred slides and a single one of them brought down an area of seventy-five acres. Think of a seventy-five acre field all sliding in at once, every foot of which had to be dug out! The worst trouble was when the bottom bulged up from below. Some little time before my visit a large tree came up from the bottom. It had been rolled in by one of those fearful slides and long afterwards came up from the bottom. Somebody has figured out that if all the dirt that has been taken from Culebra Cut was loaded on railroad cars they would, if coupled together, make a train that would reach around the world four times. The canal cost about four hundred million dollars. The tolls now amount to almost a million dollars a month so it is more than paying expenses. The ship upon which I passed through paid seven thousand dollars toll, but it was one of the largest ships that pass through. Now that the danger from slides is practically over and trade routes are being established it ought to be a paying investment. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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