Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

THE PANAMA CANAL. Why and How it is being Built. BY JOHN GEO. LEIGH. An Up-to=date Account of what may justly be termed the Greatest of all Engineering Enterprises. IN the Isthmus of Panama Nature has raised a wall—either by imperceptibly slow degrees, or more probably, as geologists and other scientists tell us, by a single convulsive movement — which mocks the fleets ploughing the At- lantic and Pacific Oceans. A steamer moored in the Ca- ribbean Sea may, metaphorically speaking, hail an- other lying in Panama Bay ; but should it be neces- sary for either to relieve the other, she must circle the entire continent of South America, a distance of 10,500 nautical miles. The voyage of more than 13,000 miles undertaken by the battleship Oregon when sum- moned to assist in the defence of the Atlantic coast was an object lesson to the United States which could not be ignored. It excited many painful apprehensions, for besides being storm- tossed in the Straits of Magellan, the Oregon (1,408) TROPICAL VEGETATION IN THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA. was exposed to surprise by the Spanish fleet near Cape Verde or among the passages of the Windward and Leeward Islands. Moreover, if Spain had at that time had a single active ally among the leading states of South America, the voyage itself might at least have been seriously obstructed by that peaceful act of war, the refusal of coaling facilities. Another proof of the strategic value of the long-prom- ised trans-Isthmian route is given by the more recent cruise, in 1908, of the United States Atlantic battleship fleet to Pacific ports. This was an event of great im- portance, because it showed how much time and coal might be saved under improved conditions. Had the demonstration been postponed for a few years, the rounding of Cape Horn would have been superfluous, and vessels from Hampden Roads might have steamed direct VOL. II.