The Panama Canal and its Makers Part 1

The Panama Ca.n.a.l and its Makers.

by Vaughan Cornish.

PREFACE

I AM indebted to many persons for advice and information in connection with my study of the Panama Ca.n.a.l, and wish to thank particularly His Excellency the Rt. Hon. James Bryce, the Rt. Hon. Lord Avebury, Mr.

Claude Mallet, C.M.G., Colonel George E. Church, Colonel George W.

Goethals, chairman of the Isthmian Ca.n.a.l Commission, and his colleagues, Colonel W.C. Gorgas, M.D., Major D.D. Gaillard, Major William L. Sibert, Mr. Jackson Smith, and Mr. Bucklin Bishop. Also Major Chester Harding, Mr. Arango, Mr. G.R. Shanton, Chief of Police, Mr. William Gerig (formerly in charge of the Gatun Dam), Mr. Mason W. Mitch.e.l.l, and Mr.

Tracy Robinson.

VAUGHAN CORNISH.

_November_, 1908.

INTRODUCTION

AT the present moment the Ca.n.a.l Zone of the Isthmus of Panama is the most interesting place in the world. Here is gathered an army of 40,000 men engaged in the epoch-making work of uniting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and here is the greatest collection of machinery ever ma.s.sed for the accomplishment of one undertaking.

If the present rate of progress continue unchecked, the Ca.n.a.l, it is calculated, will be opened in 1915. Then will that Isthmus, which has. .h.i.therto been a barrier between two oceans but has failed to act as a bridge between two continents, be pierced by a waterway capable of floating the largest ships now built or building. Then will the Pacific coasts of the Americas be accessible from ports on both sides of the Atlantic without the necessity of a voyage by the Straits of Magellan.

Then will the distance from New York to San Francis...o...b.. shortened by 8,400 and that from Liverpool by 6,000 miles; the distance from New York to South American ports will be shortened by an average of 5,000 and that from Liverpool to these ports by an average of 2,600 miles: then for the first time Yokohama on the north and Sydney on the south will be brought nearer to New York than to Liverpool or Antwerp, and then will New Orleans and the ports on the Mexican Gulf be brought nearer than New York, by sea, to San Francisco, South America beyond Pernambuco, Australia, and j.a.pan.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STATUE OF COLUMBUS, CHRISTOBAL, COLON.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHRISTCHURCH, COLON.]

No one who cares to know the greater things which are shaping the world can now afford to be ignorant of what is happening on the Isthmus of Panama. In the former days of unstable companies the student of affairs might decline to occupy himself in the study of an undertaking of which the fruition was doubtful. Now, however, that the Government of a great nation have put their hands to the plough the furrow will be driven through. The United States have acquired complete ownership and control of the Ca.n.a.l and of a strip of land five miles wide on either side, called the Ca.n.a.l Zone. The small State of Panama, in which this zone is situate, has placed itself under the protection of the United States.

The Government of Great Britain has by a treaty ratified in 1901 waived the treaty right which it formerly enjoyed to share with the United States the control of any trans-Isthmian ca.n.a.l. The Isthmus has been freed from those pestilences which were the greatest obstacles to human effort, and the engineering difficulties are no longer beyond the scope of modern science.

Having first visited the Ca.n.a.l works at the beginning of 1907, I decided to make upon the spot a careful examination of the whole undertaking.

For this purpose I visited Washington and made application through the proper channel to the Department of State, which kindly consented to further the inquiry. A set of the published doc.u.ments was supplied to me, and I proceeded from New York to the Isthmus by the R.M.S.P.

_Magdalena_, arriving at Colon April 12, 1908. Here Colonel Goethals, chairman of the Isthmian Ca.n.a.l Commission, provided me with a letter to those concerned to furnish all information, and proposed that I should make my way about unattended and pursue my inquiries independently. I was thus enabled to converse with perfect freedom with the rank and file, while drawing freely on the special information possessed only by the heads of departments.

For the benefit of readers in England I may explain that these circ.u.mstances were to me of especial importance on account of the doubts thrown by American writers, and also by Americans of repute in conversation, upon the reliability of official and other information supplied to the American public on the burning topic of the Isthmus. As an Englishman, and therefore standing outside American party politics, and as a scientific student not engaged in commerce or political life, I came to the study of the subject without prepossessions. This at least was my happy state when I arrived in Washington in March last. When I left for the Ca.n.a.l Zone a month later I was filled with gloomy forebodings that I might after all find a rotten state of affairs on the Isthmus. It was with intense relief that I found that I had what is called in America "an honest proposition" to deal with. As my doubts. .h.i.therto had been due to the patriotic anxiety of their compatriots, I am sure Colonel Goethals and his colleagues will forgive me for this frank statement of my difficulties and their solution.

Any Englishman, accustomed to see the work of our own soldiers and civil servants in the Crown Colonies or in Egypt, would recognise in the officers of the corps of Engineers and of the Army Medical Corps who are in charge of the Ca.n.a.l Zone men of a like high standard of duty. As this account is written not only for my own countrymen but also for readers on the other side of the Atlantic, I should be glad, if it be possible, to convince of my own _bona-fides_ those anxious patriots who find it difficult to believe any good report from Panama. It may tend in this direction to state that I travelled and sojourned at my own charges, and that I went out on an independent inquiry. That I had promised to give an account of the Ca.n.a.l works to my brother geographers in London was my only undertaking, and the acceptance of a free pa.s.s on the Panama Railway my only financial obligation either in Washington or on the Isthmus.

In order properly to understand the present and future of the Ca.n.a.l undertaking, it is necessary to give a short account of the history of Isthmian communication, for the conditions which now face the American Government and the Commission are not solely due to present physical causes, but also to previous events.

CHAPTER I

HISTORICAL REVIEW

THE conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453 completed their capture of the trade routes between Western Europe and the East Indies. The East Indian trade had long been a source of great enrichment to European merchants. It was especially suited to the restricted carrying power of those times, the products (such as pepper) being small in bulk and high in price. The maritime nations therefore sought sea routes to the Indies in pursuit of this trade, and it was Columbus himself, in his efforts to open up a western route to the Indies and China, who discovered the Bay of Limon in 1497. He and his successors sought for a strait or channel which should open the way to the East Indies. Cortes sought for the strait in Mexico. Others sought as far north as the St. Lawrence, which was supposed to afford a route to China. No opening could, however, be found nearer to the Equator than the Straits of Magellan (1520), and the hopes of a short route westward to the Indies were disappointed. An Isthmian ca.n.a.l was talked of even in the days of Charles V. of Spain to open the route to the East Indies. In those days of small vessels, the river channels would have served for a great part of the traverse, so that the scheme was not so wild as it may seem.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOCK AND DAM SITE, GATUN.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: EXCAVATION FOR LOCKS, GATUN.]

The purpose, therefore, of the first proposal for piercing the Isthmus was for shortening the distance to the Indies and China. The discovery of the nearer riches of Peru, however, ill.u.s.trated the fact that the Isthmian barrier has its uses as well as its inconveniences. Porto Bello and Panama were fortified, ships were launched from the latter port for the Peruvian traffic, the treasure was carried across the Isthmus under escort and shipped to Spain. The treasure-ships, indeed, were liable to attack on the Caribbean, but the Isthmian barrier proved an important safeguard to the Peruvian possessions of Spain.

In the next century, the seventeenth, the importance of the Isthmian land route declined, owing to the fact that Spain was no longer able to secure even moderate safety for her ships on the Caribbean. In the present days, when the importance of naval power is so well understood, it is hardly necessary to enlarge upon the significance of this fact, and its bearing upon the problems presented by the Panama route to-day.

The project of an Isthmian ca.n.a.l for the purpose of trade between Europe and Asia continued to be agitated, but the inducements were inadequate to overcome the obstacles.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, for the second time, it was the need of improved communication between the east and west of the American Continent which provided a sufficient inducement to improve the Isthmian route.

At this time the Government of the United States were much occupied with projects of trans-Isthmian communication, particularly by ca.n.a.l, not with a view to Trans.p.a.cific commerce, but with the object of improved communication between the east and west of their own territory.

In 1846 a treaty was made with the State of New Grenada (afterwards Colombia) with a view to providing facilities for transport in the war between the United States and Mexico. In its most important provision it is similar to the present treaty between the United States and the new Republic of Panama, viz., the United States guarantee the sovereignty of the State in question over the Isthmian territory. Hence the Isthmus was thus early const.i.tuted a Protectorate of the United States.

But at this time it was generally thought that Lake Nicaragua provided the best route for a trans-Isthmian ca.n.a.l.

The Pacific seaboard having recently acquired importance to the United States, the Government desired to further the ca.n.a.l project on that account. The only practicable Atlantic terminal of a Nicaraguan ca.n.a.l lay within territory over which Great Britain had long exercised control. Further, the Pacific Coast of Canada had recently acquired importance to the eastern provinces and to the home country, and access thereto was extremely difficult. The outcome of these circ.u.mstances was the conclusion in 1850 of the celebrated Clayton-Bulwer treaty between the United States and Great Britain, which was duly ratified by Congress. By this instrument it was agreed that neither Government should ever obtain or maintain for itself any exclusive control of any ca.n.a.l connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, nor erect fortifications commanding the same.

This treaty remained in force until 1901, and I shall have to refer to it again. Meanwhile the great rush of gold-seekers to California had supplied the needful stimulus to a scheme, already mooted, of an Isthmian railway terminating at Panama. In spite of the enormous difficulties entailed by the pestilential climate, the undertaking was completed in 1855. This achievement, originating in New York, was the work of W.H. Aspinwall, Henry Chauncey, and John L. Stephens.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RE-LOCATION OF RAILWAY ABOVE GATUN.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOTOR TROLLEY FOR INSPECTION OF WORKS.]

It was undertaken independently of any ca.n.a.l scheme, but it exercised a profound effect upon the fate of subsequent schemes. The facilities which the railway afforded determined de Lesseps's choice of route, and de Lesseps ploughed so deeply that those who came after him have found themselves constrained to follow his furrow. The "New World" is in fact no longer new, and its statesmen now have to solve problems presenting historical as well as physical factors.

The American Civil War interrupted the prosecution of ca.n.a.l schemes, but the examination of routes was recommenced by the United States Government in 1866, a Commission finally reporting in 1876[1] in favour of the Nicaraguan route.

[1] The report, however, was not published until 1879.

In 1869 the Suez Ca.n.a.l was opened for traffic. Immediately, the route by Panama ceased to be the shortest from Europe to any part of the East Indies. The importance of that route to Asia was thus greatly reduced as far as Europe was concerned, but, relatively, its importance to the United States was increased, for the Suez Ca.n.a.l does not shorten the Asiatic voyage from New York, Boston, or New Orleans to the same extent as it does for European ports.

The Old World had been severed into halves by the enterprise of one man, and that man no potentate, but merely one possessing the gift of persuasion. By his achievement, which was immediately crowned by financial success, Ferdinand de Lesseps suddenly became possessed of powers such as are not always at the disposal of the Governments even of great countries. He decided himself to sever the barrier between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, convened a "Congress" at Paris in 1879, and inaugurated in 1881 the _Compagnie Universelle du Ca.n.a.l Inter-oceanique de Panama_. He had decided to adopt the Panama route on account of the facilities afforded by the railway. The money was mainly subscribed in France. The American railway company was bought out at the enormous price of $25,500,000, and in the course of the next eight years a large part of the work required for a tide-level ca.n.a.l was well executed on sound lines by the genius of the French, who are excelled by none in the arts of the civil engineer. The exact proportion which the French work bears to that since accomplished by the American Government will be shown later. The engineers now on the Isthmus are full of praise for the work of the French engineers, and their wonder daily grows both at its quant.i.ty and its ingenuity. It is only those at a distance, or ill-informed, who have belittled these achievements. Unfortunately, the French engineers were not properly supported. De Lesseps, if he were ever a practical man, had certainly ceased to be so since his first great success. A practical man is one who counts the cost of everything he is about to do. De Lesseps no longer counted cost. He had become as one believing in his star. His actions remind us of those of some of the great conquerors whose early successes have led them to undertake impossible campaigns. The question has been discussed if any human character can stand more than a certain share of success and yet retain a sound judgment. Certainly the character of de Lesseps was not equal to the strain. The expenditure was awful--$300,000,000 in eight years, _i.e._, more than three times the sum for which the Suez Ca.n.a.l was constructed. The Company went into liquidation in 1889. Much had been embezzled. Much, it is said, had been spent in purchasing the silence of voices which would otherwise have been raised against a Europeanised ca.n.a.l.

The affairs of the Company were taken over by the New Panama Ca.n.a.l Company, who continued to administer the railway, and, with small means, did excellent work for the next twelve years in keeping the machinery and the works from deterioration, in excavations at the summit, and above all in extending the scientific examination of the country so as to obtain much-needed data for the construction of the high-level ca.n.a.l which was now proposed in place of de Lesseps's project of a tide-level waterway.

In 1869 President Grant, in a message to Congress, had recommended the construction of an Isthmian ca.n.a.l under the sole control of the United States, and popular opinion since that time, if not before, has always strongly held that if a ca.n.a.l be made it should be exclusively under that control. It was not the least of de Lesseps's imprudences that he proceeded with his project in spite of warnings on this matter. In 1898 an event occurred which made the American nation feel that an Isthmian ca.n.a.l was necessary, and that it must be under their exclusive control.

At the outset of the war with Spain, the _Oregon_, one of the best of America's small fleet of battleships (we write of ten years since), was lying in the Pacific. She had to steam more than 13,000 miles to reach Key West, and the whole nation was in a state of nervous tension for many weeks pending her junction with the main fleet.

It seemed at the time that the Panama route could hardly be obtained for a ca.n.a.l under purely American control, and a further investigation of the Nicaraguan route was ordered--that route which had been preferred by the American experts before de Lesseps intervened. The New Panama Ca.n.a.l Company had by this time brought their labours to the point where it seemed practicable to appeal to the investing public of the world for funds to construct a high-level Panama ca.n.a.l. To do this in the face of a Nicaraguan ca.n.a.l, undertaken as a national affair by the United States, would have been hopeless: they therefore laid their detailed plans before President McKinley. A Commission was accordingly appointed by Congress to inquire into the best route for an Isthmian ca.n.a.l "under the control, management, and ownership of the United States."[2] The report was presented to Congress on December 4, 1901, rather more than two years later, and is a doc.u.ment of great historical and scientific interest. The quarto volume of 688 pages is accompanied by a portfolio of 86 maps, plans, and panoramic views. The last of these, showing the mountainous skyline of the Isthmus east of Colon, with alt.i.tudes marked, ill.u.s.trates in a striking manner the conclusion of the Commission that the San Blas route, or any route east of Colon, would involve a ship tunnel. These routes are dismissed as impracticable on account of the alt.i.tude of the divide. The Nicaraguan and Panamanian are found to be the only practicable routes, and the details of both are fully discussed. The high-level ca.n.a.l was preferred by the Commission to the sea-level at Panama, and on the Nicaraguan route only a high-level ca.n.a.l is possible, so that in this respect the two routes were considered to be on a par.