Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

THE PANAMA CANAL. 131 the sceptical and priest-ridden court of Philip the Second is still worth recalling : “ Moun- tains there are, but there are also men. Take but the resolve, and it [the Canal] can be made.” To us, familiar with, great engineering achievements, it may seem strange that such men long spoke in vain. The reasons are many—physical, financial, and, A Tremendous -n a jarge t]egree, political. Nature, as will be shown in later pages, has mad© her position in Central America well-nigh impregnable by piling up the wonderful year 1848. No sooner had California passed from the rule of Mexico to that of the United States than gold was found in it. From Impetus the east came thousands of _g11.^en treasure-seekers, eager to Gold. reach the new El Dorado, and yet escape the corpse-strewn overland trails and the scarcely less perilous voyage round the Horn. Landing at Chagres or San Juan del Norte (now Grey town) from steamers hurriedly commissioned in New York, the pilgrims made their way as best they could MAP OF CANAL ZONE, SHOWING THE GREAT LAKE THAT WILL BE FORMED BY IMPOUNDING THE CHAGRES RIVER AT GATUN ; SITE OF LOCKS ; LINE OF NEW RAILWAY, ETC. defences, the full strength of which is only now being gradually discovered. From the first it has been recognized that to storm these are needed all the available resources of a strong government. But Holy Church threat- ened with the Divine displeasure in early days all who might attempt to pierce a barrier obviously intended to be for all time a hin- drance to navigation. Four centuries later the dog-in-the-manger policy of the British Government postponed for many a year the construction of the Suez Canal, and the in- auguration by the United States of the yet greater enterprise to which this article is devoted. The modern history of the Canal dates from across the Isthmus of Panama, or westward through Nicaragua. Many were drowned, many died of starvation, and hundreds suc- cumbed to plague, “ yellow Jack,” and other diseases. Those who reached the Pacific side of California were conveyed by steamers to San Francisco —at that time a village with about four hun- dred inhabitants—for the most part too poor to risk a tramp to the “ diggings.” The subsequent development and other Pacific States was greatly assisted by a single-line railway, 472 miles long, from Colon to Panama, opened to public use early in 1855. No i reaped in so short a time such a golden The Old Panama Railway. investors ever