THE FRENCH FAILURE.
The French company began work on the isthmus in February, and such a
rake's progress set in as the world has seldom seen. The name of
Ferdinand de Lesseps inspired such confidence that plenty of money was
forthcoming from the French people. A great deal of it was subscribed by
small investors who could ill afford to lose their savings, and no fewer
than 16,000 women took shares in their own names. The beginning of the
excavations was celebrated with a "gala" performance in the little
theatre at Panama, among the artistes being Sarah Bernhardt. Then began
a drama or a melodrama of extravagance and profligacy lasting seven
years. Money was poured out like the torrential flood-waters down the
river Chagres. I have mentioned the exorbitant sum which the company
paid for the Panama Railway. All the expenditure was on the same scale.
Princely salaries were paid to the managers and directors, and elegant
mansions erected for their accommodation. Building operations--warehouses,
hospitals, hotels, etc.--were carried on "regardless." Mr. W. F. Johnson
tells of a man who owned thirty acres of land useful mainly as a
breeding-place for mosquitoes, but lying right across the route of the
canal. It was worth perhaps 300 dollars. The man demanded just a
thousand times that sum; the Colombian courts awarded it, and the French
paid it. For one great mistake the French made was that they failed to
secure a canal zone in which they would have exercised full powers of
administration. They began to build their canal on Colombian territory,
under Colombian control, and the consequence was that they were fleeced
on every side. Probably this mistake was inevitable, as the United
States would have vetoed any territorial concession by Colombia to
France as a transgression of the Monroe doctrine.
The isthmus rapidly degenerated into a moral as well as a climatic
pest-house. Froude described the condition of things at Panama in one
terrible sentence: "In all the world there is perhaps not now
concentrated in any single spot so much swindling and villainy, so much
foul disease, such a hideous dung-heap of moral and physical
abomination." In fairness, however, it must be said that Lesseps himself
cannot be held directly responsible for this state of affairs. He lived
in Paris, and had probably little notion of what was happening at
Panama. He furnished an example of the proverbial effects of too much
success and prosperity. He seems to have become a superstitious believer
in his own star, and to have thought that nothing could fail with which
he was associated. Still less can the French nation be blamed for the
wild doings of their representatives at the isthmus. And there is at
least one redeeming feature in the conduct of this enterprise. In the
midst of the moral and physical abominations that infested the isthmus
during the French occupation, the engineering work went on steadily and
conscientiously. Much of the French work was available for the Americans
when they took over the task, and the engineers of the United States
have always testified generously to the excellence of the French
excavation and construction along the Canal route.
It must be carefully noted that the French canal was to be sea-level
like the Suez, Corinth, and Kiel Canals. The construction of such a
waterway differed in many important ways from that of the high-level
lock canal which the United States have completed. To understand this we
must consider briefly the character of the country which lies between
Panama and Colon. The dominant and decisive features of the isthmus at
this point are the Chagres River and the Culebra Mountains. The Chagres
enters the Caribbean a little west of Colon. Its valley runs right
across the isthmus south-south-eastwardly towards Panama for about
twenty-six miles, then, at a place called Bas Opisbo, suddenly swerves
away to the north-east into the trackless and jungle-clad hill country.
This valley is the only transverse trench which the isthmus affords at
this stretch, and it has always fixed the attention of surveyors looking
out for a canal site. If the isthmus had been a rainless desert like
that of Suez, a canal could have been constructed by a further
preparation of this river valley and some heavy excavations along the
nine-mile reach from Obispo to the Pacific. The sea would then have been
admitted, the ebb and flow of the Pacific (the Atlantic shore is almost
tideless) being regulated by a tidal lock. But the problem is not nearly
so simple. The isthmus is one of the rainiest places in the world,
enjoying on the Atlantic side 140 inches of rain a year. At Panama the
rate is much smaller, not more than 60 inches. In the central hills the
rainfall averages 90 to 95 inches. The average number of rainy days in
the year is 246 at Bohio (inland on the Atlantic side), 196 at Colon,
and 141 at Panama. The reader must not imagine a perpetual downpour or
drizzle. The rain comes down in thundering tropical cataracts, leaving
spaces of fine weather between the storms. Still, the isthmus is
undoubtedly rainy and damp, and it is this humidity which makes the
climate so trying, though the variations of the thermometer are by no
means extreme and the average air temperature not particularly high. For
example, the average temperature at Panama ranges from 81.6 Fahrenheit
in November to 86.1 in March--that is, during the hottest time of the
day, from two to four o'clock p.m. The coolest time is from six to seven
a.m., when the average temperature ranges between 74.0 in January to
76.6 in June. The yearly average daily temperature is 79.6. The
thermometer seems never to have recorded 100 degrees Fahrenheit at
Panama, whereas 104 has been touched even at Washington.
But to return to the Chagres River. The tropical rains convert this
stream very quickly into a raging torrent. The Chagres is capable of
rising over forty feet in twenty-four hours. If the Chagres valley was
to be the site of the canal, as was obviously necessary, how did the
French propose to "care for" this tremendous and capricious flow of
water? Mr. Johnson remarks that "those who have seen the antics of the
Chagres under the stress of a characteristic isthmian rain must be
pardoned if they regard the harnessing of the Chagres to the canal as
something much like the harnessing of a mad elephant to a family
carriage." The only course open to the French with their sea-level
project was to divert the Chagres with its twenty-six tributaries,
chief of which are the Gatun and the Trinidad, from its old valley into
another channel, along which it could rage as it pleased on its short
journey to the Caribbean. This would have been a tremendous, though
probably not an impossible, task. The New Panama Company, which took the
French work from the Lesseps Company in 1893, dropped the tide-level in
favour of a lock or high-level canal, and adopted the plan of a dam
across the river valley at Bohio, creating a lake above this point and
discharging the flood waters to the level below by means of a spillway
in the adjacent hills. We shall see later how the Americans adopted the
same principle but modified it in practice.
So much at present for the Chagres problem. The other main feature of
the isthmus is met with about the point where the river suddenly changes
its direction--that is at Bas Obispo, or Gamboa, about nine miles from
the Pacific outlet. Here are the hills, the backbone or "continental
divide," averaging over 300 feet high but rising to much higher points,
which connects the Cordilleras of South with the Sierras of North
America. For eight or nine miles the canal must run through this
central barrier on its way to the Pacific. The earliest French notion
was for a ship tunnel--a project perhaps never seriously contemplated.
The only other course was to cut right down through this hilly country.
That was a tremendous undertaking, which required, even for its
inception, a good deal of the faith which is said to be able to "remove
mountains." We shall look more closely at the famous "Culebra Cut" when
we come to the American canal. Most of the work of the French companies
consisted of the dredging of the sea-level channels at the Atlantic and
Pacific ends. But they drove a pretty deep furrow as well through the
Culebra Mountains, excavating in all about 22,600,000 cubic yards.
With their sea-level scheme the French had, of course, a bigger
proposition before them at the hills than their American successors.
They would have had to cut right down below sea-level, whereas the
bottom of the cut in the American lock-canal is forty feet above that
level. Considering the difficulty the United States engineers have had
with "slides" and "breaks" along the sides of their cutting, one
suspects that the much deeper and narrower channel of the French would
have proved impracticable. The French scheme gave a width to the channel
at this point of only 74 feet, while the bottom width of the American
canal is 300 feet. The French work at the "Cut" was all utilizable by
the Americans, who, though with different machinery, adopted the same
general method of excavation.
In 1888 the French company suspended payments and went into bankruptcy.
The canal was completed to the extent of about two-fifths, and had
already cost nearly L80,000,000. It was said at the time that about
one-third of this sum was spent on the canal, one-third wasted, and
one-third stolen. The original capital with the eight subscription lists
between 1882 and 1888 produced nominally L78,701,020, but actually only
L40,309,348, the loss in discounts, etc., amounting to L38,391,672. The
collapse of the company was followed by investigations and trials in
France. Ten senators and deputies, together with the directors, were
brought to trial. Ferdinand and his son Charles de Lesseps were, among
others, condemned to fines and imprisonment, but the sentences upon the
Lesseps were never carried out. Neither the son nor the father was
probably responsible for the iniquities which had marked the history of
the company. The genius who had created the Suez Canal was indeed
completely broken down by the tragical conclusion of his second venture,
and died in 1894 in a condition of mental and physical collapse.
But financial profligacy was not the only cause of the French failure.
Disease and death fought against the enterprise from the first. Yellow
fever and malaria caused as much mortality among the French employees as
would suffice for a great military campaign. Sir Ronald Ross, the great
expert in tropical diseases, was told in 1904, when at the isthmus, that
the French attempt cost at least 50,000 lives. This may have been an
over-estimate, but there is no doubt that the mortality was terrible,
and would probably have brought the French operations to an end even if
greater economy and honesty had prevailed in the administration. It must
not be supposed that the French made no provision for the victims of
these endemic diseases. Excellent hospitals were built at Ancon, near
Panama, at a cost of over a million of money; while those at Colon cost
more than a quarter of a million--in both cases about three times a fair
and honest price. At the time of the French occupation of the isthmus
nothing was known of the real nature and cause of yellow fever and
malaria, of the manner in which they are transmitted, and the only
effective means of prevention. All the recent and marvellous advance in
scientific knowledge of these diseases was available when the Americans
began their work, and was applied with the greatest efficiency and
success. Medical science, quite as much as engineering skill, made a
Panama canal possible, and we shall have a good deal more to say on this
subject when we come to describe the American operations.
Let us not forget, then, that despite their failure the French did a
great deal of good work, which they passed on many years afterwards to
their American successors. A quantity of the French machinery, tools,
and hardware was also available. It is true that among this was included
a large consignment of snow-shovels (for use at sea-level less than 10
degrees from the Equator!), and a quantity of petroleum torches for the
festivities which were one day to celebrate the completion of the canal.
But a great deal of the plant was in good condition. The extravagance
and corruption which prevailed at the isthmus during the first French
company were almost incredible. But it may be doubted whether any other
nation could have succeeded in the 'eighties of last century where the
French failed.