But the city, and the people in it, interest you chiefly because of
the canal; and even the ruins of the Spanish occupation, and the tales
of buccaneers and of bloody battles and buried treasure, cannot touch
you so nearly as do the great, pretentious building of the company and
the stories of De Lesseps’ visit, and the ceremonies and feastings and
celebrations which inaugurated the greatest failure of modern times.
The new director of the canal company put a tug at our disposal,
and sent us orders that permitted us to see as much of the canal as
has been completed from the Pacific side. But before presenting our
orders we drove out from the city one afternoon and began a personally
conducted inspection of the machine-shops.
We had read of the pathetic spectacle presented by thousands of
dollars’ worth of locomotive engines and machinery lying rotting and
rusting in the swamps, and as it had interested us when we had read of
it, we were naturally even more anxious to see it with our own eyes.
We, however, did not see any machinery rusting, nor any locomotives
lying half buried in the mud. All the locomotives that we saw were
raised from the ground on ties and protected with a wooden shed, and
had been painted and oiled and cared for as they would have been in
the Baldwin Locomotive Works. We found the same state of things in the
great machine-works, and though none of us knew a turning-lathe from a
sewing-machine, we could at least understand that certain wheels should
make other wheels move if everything was in working order, and so we
made the wheels go round, and punched holes in sheets of iron with
steel rods, and pierced plates, and scraped iron bars, and climbed to
shelves twenty and thirty feet from the floor, only to find that each
bit and screw in each numbered pigeon-hole was as sharp and covered as
thick with oil as though it had been in use that morning.
This was not as interesting as it would have been had we seen what
the other writers who have visited the isthmus saw. And it would have
given me a better chance for descriptive writing had I found the ruins
of gigantic dredging-machines buried in the morasses, and millions of
dollars’ worth of delicate machinery blistering and rusting under the
palm-trees; but, as a rule, it is better to describe things just as you
saw them, and not as it is the fashion to see them, even though your
way be not so picturesque.
As a matter of fact, the care the company was taking of its machinery
and its fleet of dredging-scows and locomotives struck me as being much
more pathetic than the sight of the same instruments would have been
had we found them abandoned to the elements and the mud. For it was
like a general pipe-claying his cross-belt and polishing his buttons
after his army had been routed and killed, and he had lost everything,
including honor.
[Illustration: HUTS OF WORKMEN EMPLOYED ON THE CANAL]
There was a little village of whitewashed huts on the southern bank of
the Rio Grande, where the men lived who take care of the fleet and the
machine-shop, and it was as carefully kept and as clean as a graveyard.
Before the crash came the quarters of the men used to ring with their
yells at night, and the music of guitars and banjos came from the open
doors of cafés and drinking-booths, and a pistol-shot meant no more
than a momentary punctuation of the night’s pleasure. Those were great
days, and there were thousands of men where there are now a score, and
a line of light and deviltry ran from the canal’s mouth for miles back
to the city, where it blazed into a great fire of dissolute pleasure
and excitement. In those days men were making fortunes in a night,
and by ways as dark as night--by furnishing machinery that could not
even be put together, by supplying blocks of granite that cost more in
freight than bars of silver, by kidnapping workmen for the swamps, and
by the simple methods of false accounts and credits. And while some
were growing rich, others were living with the fear of sudden death
before their eyes, and drinking the native rum that they might forget
it, and throwing their wages away on the roulette-tables, and eating
and drinking and making merry in the fear that they might die on the
morrow.
Mr. Wells, an American engineer, was in charge of the company’s
flotilla, and waited for us at the wharf.
“I saw you investigating our engines,” he said. “That’s all right.
Only tell the truth about what you see, and we won’t mind.”
We stood on the bow of the tug and sped up the length of the canal
between great dredging-machines that towered as high above us as the
bridge of an ocean liner, and that weighed apparently as much as a
battle-ship. The decks of some of them were split with the heat, and
there were shutters missing from the cabin windows, but the monster
machinery was intact, and the wood-work was freshly painted and
scrubbed. They reminded me of a line of old ships of war at rest in
some navy-yard. They represent in money value, even as they are to-day,
five million francs. Beyond them on either side stretched low green
bushes, through which the Rio Grande bent and twisted, and beyond the
bushes were high hills and the Pacific Ocean, into which the sun set,
leaving us cold and depressed.
[Illustration: THE TOP OF A DREDGE]
Except for the bubbling of the water under our bow there was not a
sound to disturb the silence that hung above the narrow canal and the
green bushes that rose from a bed of water. I thought of the entrance
of the Suez Canal, as I had seen it at Port Said and at Ismaïlia,
with great P. & O. steamers passing down its length, and troop-ships
showing hundreds of white helmets above the sides, and tramp steamers
and sailing-vessels flying every flag, and compared it and its
scenes of life and movement with this dreary waste before us, with the
idle dredges rearing their iron girders to the sky, the engineers’
sign-posts half smothered in the water and the mud, and with a naked
fisherman paddling noiselessly down the canal with his eyes fixed on
the water, his hollowed log canoe the only floating vessel in what
should have been the highway of the world.
There were about eight hundred men in all working along the whole
length of the canal while we were there, instead of the twelve thousand
that once made the place hum with activity. But the work the twelve
thousand accomplished remains, and the stranger is surprised to find
that there is so much of it and that it is so well done. It looks to
his ignorant eyes as though only a little more energy and a greater
amount of honesty would be necessary to open the canal to traffic; but
experts will tell him that one hundred million dollars will have to be
expended and seven or eight years of honest work done before that ditch
can be dug and France hold a Kiel celebration of her own.
But before that happens every citizen of the United States should help
to open the Nicaragua Canal to the world under the protection and the
virtual ownership of his own country.
Our stay in Panama was shortened somewhat on account of our having
taken too great an interest in the freedom of a young lawyer and
diplomat, who was arrested while we were there, charged with being one
of the leaders of the revolution.
[Illustration: STREET SCENE IN PANAMA]
He was an acquaintance of Lloyd Griscom’s, who took an interest in
the young rebel because they had both been in the diplomatic service
abroad. One afternoon, while Griscom and the lawyer were sitting
together in the office of the latter, five soldiers entered the place
and ordered the suspected revolutionist to accompany them to the
cartel. As he happened to know something of the law, he protested that
they must first show him a warrant, and while two of them went out
for the warrant and the others kept watch in the outer office Griscom
mapped out a plan of escape. The lawyer’s office hung over the Bay of
Panama, and Griscom’s idea was that he should, under the protection of
the darkness, slip down a rope from the window to a small boat below
and be rowed out to the _Barracouta_, of the Pacific Mail Company’s
line, which was listed to sail that same evening up the coast. The
friends of the rebel were sent for, and with their assistance Griscom
made every preparation for the young rebel’s escape, and then came to
the hotel and informed Somerset and myself of what he had done, and
asked us to aid in what was to follow. We knew nothing of the rights
or the wrongs of the revolutionists, but we considered that a man
who was going down a rope into a small boat while three soldiers sat
waiting for him in an outer room was performing a sporting act that
called for our active sympathy. So we followed Griscom to his friend’s
office, and, having passed the soldiers, were ushered into his presence
and introduced to him and his friends.
He was a little man, but was not at all alarmed, nor did he pose or
exhibit any braggadocio, as a man of weaker calibre might have done
under the circumstances. When we offered to hold the rope for him, or
to block up the doors so that the soldiers might not see what was going
forward, he thanked us with such grateful politeness that he made me
feel rather ashamed of myself; for my interest in the matter up to that
point had not been a very serious or a high one. Indeed, I did not even
know the gentleman’s name. But as we did not know the names of the
government people against whom he was plotting either, we felt that we
could not be accused of partiality.
The prisoner did not want his wife to know what had happened, and so
sent her word that important legal business would detain him at the
office, and that his dinner was to be brought to him there. The rope by
which he was to escape was smuggled past the soldiers under the napkin
which covered this dinner. It was then seven o’clock and nearly dark,
and as our rebel friend feared our presence might excite suspicion,
he asked us to go away, and requested us to return in half an hour. It
would then be quite dark, and the attempt to escape could be made with
greater safety.
But the alcalde during our absence spoiled what might have been an
excellent story by rushing in and carrying the diplomat off to jail.
When we returned we found the office locked and guarded, and as
we walked away, in doubt as to whether he had escaped or had been
arrested, we found that the soldiers were following us. As this
continued throughout the evening we went across the isthmus the next
morning to Colon, the same soldiers accompanying us on our way.
[Illustration: THE CANAL IN THE INTERIOR]
The ship of war _Atlanta_ was at Colon, and as we had met her officers
at Puerto Cortez, in Honduras, we went on board and asked them to
see that we were not shot against church walls or hung. They were
exceedingly amused, and promised us ample protection, and though we did
not need it on that occasion, I was impressed with the comforting sense
that comes to a traveller from the States when he knows that one of
our White Squadron is rolling at anchor in the harbor. And later, when
Griscom caught the Chagres fever, we had every reason to be grateful
for the presence in the harbor of the _Atlanta_, as her officers, led
by Dr. Bartolette and his assistant surgeon, Mr. Moore, helped him
through his sickness, visiting him daily with the greatest kindness and
good-will.
Colon did not impress us very favorably. It is a large town of wooden
houses, with a floating population of Jamaica negroes and a few
Chinese. The houses built for the engineers of the canal stretch out
along a point at either side of a double row of magnificent palms,
which terminate at the residence intended for De Lesseps. It is now
falling into decay. In front of it, facing the sea, is a statue of
Columbus protecting the Republic of Colombia, represented by an Indian
girl, who is crouching under his outstretched arm. This monument was
presented to the United States of Colombia by the Empress Eugenie, and
the statue is, in its fallen state, with its pedestal shattered by
the many storms and time, significant of the fallen fortunes of that
great lady herself. If Columbus could have protected Colombia from the
French as he is in the French statue protecting her from all the world,
she would now be the richest and most important of Central-American
republics.
Colon seems to be owned entirely by the Panama Railroad Company, a
monopoly that conducts its affairs with even more disregard for the
public than do other monopolies in better-known localities. The company
makes use of the seaport as a freight-yard, and its locomotives run
the length of the town throughout the entire day, blowing continually
on their whistles and ringing their bells, so that there is little
peace for the just or the unjust. We were exceedingly relieved when the
doctors agreed that Griscom was ready to put to sea again, and we were
able to turn from the scene of the great scandal and its fever fields
to the mountains of Venezuela, and of Caracas in particular.
THE PARIS OF SOUTH AMERICA
SHOVED off by itself in a corner of Central Park on the top of a wooded
hill, where only the people who live in the high apartment-houses at
Eighty-first Street can see it, is an equestrian statue. It is odd,
bizarre, and inartistic, and suggests in size and pose that equestrian
statue to General Jackson which mounts guard before the White House in
Washington. It shows a chocolate-cream soldier mastering with one hand
a rearing rocking-horse, and with the other pointing his sword towards
an imaginary enemy.
Sometimes a “sparrow” policeman saunters up the hill and looks at the
statue with unenlightened eyes, and sometimes a nurse-maid seeks its
secluded site, and sits on the pedestal below it while the children of
this free republic play unconcernedly in its shadow. On the base of
this big statue is carved the name of Simon Bolivar, the Liberator of
Venezuela.
Down on the northeastern coast of South America, in Caracas, the
capital of the United States of Venezuela, there is a pretty little
plaza, called the Plaza Washington. It is not at all an important
plaza; it is not floored for hundreds of yards with rare mosaics like
the Plaza de Bolivar, nor lit by swinging electric lights, and the
president’s band never plays there. But it has a fresh prettiness
and restfulness all its own, and the narrow gravel paths are clean
and trim, and the grass grows rich and high, and the branches of the
trees touch and interlace and form a green roof over all, except in
the very centre, where there stands open to the blue sky a statue of
Washington, calm, dignified, beneficent, and paternal. It is Washington
the statesman, not the soldier. The sun of the tropics beats down upon
his shoulders; the palms rustle and whisper pleasantly above his head.
From the barred windows of the yellow and blue and pink houses that
line the little plaza dark-eyed, dark-skinned women look out sleepily,
but understandingly, at the grave face of the North American Bolivar;
and even the policeman, with his red blanket and Winchester carbine,
comprehends when the gringos stop and take off their hats and make a
low bow to the father of their country in his pleasant place of exile.
[Illustration: STATUE OF SIMON BOLIVAR, CARACAS]
Other governments than those of the United States of America and the
United States of Venezuela have put up statues to their great men
in foreign capitals, but the careers of Washington and Bolivar bear so
striking a resemblance, and the histories of the two countries of which
they are the respective fathers are so much alike, that they might be
written in parallel columns. And so it seems especially appropriate
that these monuments to these patriots should stand in each of the two
continents on either side of the dividing states of Central America.
It will offend no true Venezuelan to-day if it be said of his country
that the most interesting man in it is a dead one, for he will allow no
one to go further than himself in his admiration for Bolivar; and he
has done so much to keep his memory fresh by circulating portraits of
him on every coin and stamp of the country, by placing his statue at
every corner, and by hanging his picture in every house, that he cannot
blame the visitor if his strongest impression of Venezuela is of the
young man who began at thirty-three to liberate five republics, and
who conquered a territory more than one-third as great as the whole of
Europe.
In 1811 Venezuela declared her independence of the mother-country of
Spain, and her great men put this declaration in writing and signed it,
and the room in which it was signed is still kept sacred, as is the
room where our declaration was signed in Independence Hall. But the
two men who were to make these declarations worth something more than
the parchment upon which they were written were not among the signers.
Their work was still to come, and it was much the same kind of work,
and carried on in much the same spirit of indomitable energy under
the most cruel difficulties, and with a few undrilled troops against
an army of veterans. It was marked by brilliant and sudden marches
and glorious victories; and where Washington suffered in the snows
of Valley Forge, or pushed his way through the floating ice of the
Delaware, young Bolivar marched under fierce tropical suns, and cut his
path through jungle and swamp-lands, and over the almost impenetrable
fastnesses of the Andes.
[Illustration: STATUE OF WASHINGTON DECORATED WITH FLORAL WREATHS BY
THE VENEZUELANS]
Their difficulties were the same and their aim was the same, but the
character of the two men were absolutely and entirely different, for
Bolivar was reckless, impatient of advice, and even foolhardy. What
Washington was we know.
The South-American came of a distinguished Spanish family, and had
been educated as a courtier and as a soldier in the mother-country,
though his heart remained always with his own people, and he was among
the first to take up arms to set them free. Unless you have seen the
country through which he led his men, and have measured the mountains
he climbed with his few followers, it is quite impossible to
understand the immensity of the task he accomplished. Even to-day a
fast steamer cannot reach Callao from Panama under seven days, and yet
Bolivar made the same distance and on foot, starting from the South
Atlantic, and continuing on across the continent to the Pacific side,
and then on down the coast into Peru, living on his way upon roots
and berries, sleeping on the ground wrapped in a blanket, riding on
muleback or climbing the steep trail on foot, and freeing on his way
Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and finally Peru, the home of
the Incas.
The history of this campaign is one too glorious and rich in incident
and color to be crowded into a few pages, and the character of its
chief actor too varied, and his rise and fall too dramatic, to be
dismissed, as it must be here, in a few paragraphs. But every American
who loves a hero and who loves a lover--and Bolivar was very much of
both, and perhaps too much of the latter--should read the life of this
young man who freed a country rich in brave men, who made some of these
who were much his senior in years his lieutenants, and who, after
risking his life upon many battle-fields and escaping several attempts
at assassination, died at last deserted except by a few friends, and
with a heart broken by the ingratitude of the people he had led out of
captivity.
It is difficult to find out, even in his own country, why the
Venezuelans, after heaping Bolivar with honors and elevating him to the
place of a god, should have turned against him, and driven him into
exile at Santa Marta. Some will tell you that he tried to make himself
dictator over the countries which he had freed; others say that it was
because he had refused to be a dictator that the popular feeling went
against him, and that when the people in the madness of their new-found
freedom cried, “Thou hast rid us of kings; be thou king,” he showed
them their folly, and sought his old home, and died there before the
reaction came, which was to sweep him back once more and forever into
the place of the popular hero of South America.
[Illustration: DECORATION OF THE STATUE OF BOLIVAR AT CARACAS,
VENEZUELA, DECEMBER 18, 1895, BY AMERICAN RESIDENTS]
It was sixteen years after his death that a hero-worshipping friend was
brave enough to commission an artist to design a statue to his memory.
On the neck of this statue the artist hung the representation of a
miniature in the shape of a medallion, which had been given to Bolivar
by the family of Washington. On the reverse was a lock of Washington’s
hair and the inscription, “This portrait of the founder of liberty in
North America is presented by his adopted son to him who has acquired
equal glory in South America.”
Some one asked why the artist had stripped from the breast of Bolivar
all of the other medals and stars that had been given him by
different countries in the hour of his triumph, and the artist answered
that he had done as his patron and the friend of Bolivar thought would
best please his hero. And ever after that it was decreed that every
bust or statue or engraving of the Liberator should show him with this
portrait of Washington hanging by a ribbon about his neck; and so you
will see in the National Portrait Gallery that while the coats of his
lieutenants glitter with orders and crosses, Bolivar’s bears this
medal only. It was his greatest pride, and he considered it his chief
glory. And the manner of its bestowal was curiously appropriate. In
1824 General Lafayette returned to this country as the guest of the
nation, and a banquet was given to him by Congress, at which the memory
of Washington and the deeds of his French lieutenant were honored
again and again. It was while the enthusiasm and rejoicings of this
celebration were at their height that Henry Clay rose in his place and
asked the six hundred Americans before him to remember that while they
were enjoying the benefits of free institutions founded by the bravery
and patriotism of their fore-fathers, their cousins and neighbors in
the southern continent were struggling to obtain that same independence.
[Illustration: SIMON BOLIVAR]
“No nation, no generous Lafayette,” he cried, “has come to their
aid; alone and without help they have sustained their glorious cause,
trusting to its justice, and with the assistance only of their bravery,
their deserts, and their Andes--and one man, Simon Bolivar, the
Washington of South America.”
[Illustration: VIEW OF LA GUAYRA]
And you can imagine the six hundred Americans jumping to their feet
and cheering the name of the young soldier, and the French marquis
eagerly asking that he might be the one to send him some token of their
sympathy and admiration. Lafayette forwarded the portrait of Washington
to Bolivar, who valued it so highly that the people who loved him
valued the man he worshipped; and to-day you will see in Caracas
streets and squares and houses named after Washington, and portraits
of Washington crossing the Delaware, and Washington on horseback, and
Washington at Mount Vernon, hanging in almost every shop and café in
the capital. And the next time you ride in Central Park you might turn
your bicycle, or tell the man on the box to turn the horses, into that
little curtain of trees, and around the hill where the odd-looking
statue stands, and see if you cannot feel some sort of sympathy and pay
some tribute to this young man who loved like a hero, and who fought
like a hero, with the fierceness of the tropical sun above him, and
whose inspiration was the calm, grave parent of your own country.
Bolivar’s country is the republic of South America that stands nearest
to New York, and when people come to know more concerning it, I am sure
they will take to visiting it and its capital, the “Paris of South
America,” in the winter months, as they now go to southern Europe or to
the Mediterranean.