Chapter 7

Dropcap T

The 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 approachedthe 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 skillthat 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, theonly 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. WRIGHTOLD FRENCH CANAL AT MOUNT HOPEOur engineers abandoned the French canal except as a docking place for vessels and a waterway for carrying material to the foot of Gatun locks.

OLD FRENCH CANAL AT MOUNT HOPEOur 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 & UnderwoodTHE CITY PARK OF COLON

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 certainsturdy 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 & UnderwoodENTRANCE TO MT. HOPE CEMETERY

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 theIsthmus 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, PANAMAThe 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 acommanding general to pay the fares for his troops over forty-eight miles of railroad. Of that, however, more hereafter.

AVENIDA CENTRALEThe 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 & UnderwoodABANDONED FRENCH MACHINERY ON THE CANAL

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. Tolaunch 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 fundamentaldifferences 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 forLa 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 JUNGLENote how the tree has grown around and into this steel dump car at San Pablo

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

NEAR THE PACIFIC ENTRANCE TO THE CANALThe 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—allboyish 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 WORKThe 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 enthusiasmthat 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 begunpro formain 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 CHURCHThis edifice, still standing at Nata, is said to be the oldest church in Panama

Photo by Underwood & UnderwoodJUNCTURE OF FRENCH AND AMERICAN CANALSThe American Canal is the wider, and affords the more direct route to the sea

Photo by Underwood & Underwood

JUNCTURE OF FRENCH AND AMERICAN CANALSThe 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 otherwisebald and uninteresting statement of fact,” by saying that the rocks were “much less resistant than we had expected.”

PART OF THE TOLL OF LIFEThis 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 investorscould 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 & UnderwoodTHE ANCON HOSPITAL GROUNDSThe beauty of the grounds is due to early French planning

Photo by Underwood & Underwood

THE ANCON HOSPITAL GROUNDSThe beauty of the grounds is due to early French planning

A SUNKEN RAILROADNine 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. Itcost $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 ZONE WORKING VILLAGEThe low houses were built by the French: all screening added by Americans

A dinner was given M. Henri Boinne, secretary-general of the company. Some one remarked that there were thirteen at the table, whereupon the guest of honor remarked gaily that as he was the last 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 noeffort 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 deadlystegomyiamosquito, 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 EMPIREPaving 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 thetemps 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.

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