Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

■■es THE PANAMA CANAL. 135 present invasion were seldom favourable ; for one landed usually on the Atlantic side at low-lying, dirty, and pestiferous Colon, where it seemed man’s destiny to be alternately drenched with rain, boiled in perspiration, and devoured by mosquitoes. In the long rainy season the streets were pools of mud. Sickening odours assailed the nostrils at every turn. From the sea came gusts of damp chilling wind ; from the land side every breeze was laden with malaria. It seemed a place not fit to die in, much less to live in. Leaving Colon by the railway, one passed for an hour or so between a succession of unsavoury swamps and lagoons, from which, when cooling, rose folds of Across the murky vapOur. The prospect Isthmus. , _ along the valley 01 the Lower Chagres was somewhat less depressing, being relieved at frequent intervals by cone-shaped hills, which, in the early days of the De Lesseps Company, had been covered with dense forests well-stocked with chattering monkeys and birds of many-hued plumage. It was not,* however, until one passed Bas Obispo, and began the ascent of the watershed between the Atlantic and the Pacific, that one shook off the depressing effects of a stay, however short, in Colon. As the train passed over the “ divide,” the magnitude and difficulties of the task under- taken by the French were more and more apparent. With the descent to the Pacific, the scenery changed, and became even pleas- ing ; cultivated tracts appeared at frequent intervals ; and the people seemed happier and brighter. Panama, in the days of which we write, was no cleaner than Colon. Its notoriety as a hotbed of disease was even better deserved. Life in it abounded with great and little miseries; but for these some solace might always be found in the mental pictures con- jured up of old-time romance and adventure. Except at two points, the state of the Canal work on May 4, 1904, the date on which the of excavation, excepting that in the cutting, being in the . , , Work done between Colon and up to 1904. a low-lymg and, in Americans took over the enterprise, differed little from that existing when the De Lessens Company ceased operations. The French had been nominally in possession for twenty-two years, but in only five of these (1884-88) did the effective force employed exceed 10,000, . the maximum (19,243) being reached in October of 1884. Work had been pursued by the first Com- pany along almost the entire line, the greatest amount Culebra section Obispo, places, marshy country. Here the Americans found, when they took possession, a stretch of canal actually open, about 11 miles long and 78 feet wide at the bottom. Altogether, for the purpose of the Canal proper, the French removed rather less than 80,000,000 cubic yards of material, of which the second Com- pany must be credited with about 10,000,000 cubic yards. Of the aggregate excavation much had been dumped so near the Canal line as to require rehandling in view of the greatly increased cross section of prism de- manded by the American plans. For this and other reasons, not more than half the con- structive work of the French could be regarded as useful by their successors. Apart from engineering questions, the most difficult problem which faced the American officials in 1904 was that of protecting from disease the army of labour, white and coloured, soon to be poured into the Isthmus. In their efforts to this end they enjoyed many advan- tages denied to the pioneers, due partly to the extensive powers granted by the treaty with Panama, but mainly to a recent revolu- tion in tropical sanitary from improved knowledge transmission of disease. In the old days yellow to be a poison, and contagious like smallpox, to which a certain proportion of newcomers, methods resulting of the causes and fever was believed