Transcriber's note: Italics are indicated with _underscores_ and
boldface with =equals signs=. Other Transcriber notes will be found
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SOUTH AMERICA
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
SOUTH AMERICA
OBSERVATIONS AND IMPRESSIONS
BY
JAMES BRYCE
AUTHOR OF "THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE"
"THE AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH," ETC.
_WITH MAPS_
NEW EDITION CORRECTED AND REVISED
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1914
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1912, 1914,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1912. Reprinted October,
November, December, 1912; January, 1913.
New revised edition, February, 1914.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
TO MY FRIENDS OF THE
ENGLISH ALPINE CLUB
PREFACE
This book records observations made and impressions formed during a
journey through western and southern South America from Panama to
Argentina and Brazil _via_ the Straits of Magellan. The nature of its
contents is briefly outlined in the Introduction which follows, so all
that I have to do here is to acknowledge gratefully the many kindnesses
I received in every part of South America which I visited, and in
particular from the following persons: Colonel Goethals, Chief Engineer
of the Panama Canal, and other officers of the United States engineers
stationed there, and Colonel Gorgas, head of the medical staff; the
officials of the Peruvian Corporation in Lima and of the Peruvian
Southern Railways in Mollendo, Arequipa, and La Paz; the officials of
the Antofagasta and Bolivia Railroad Company; those of the Transandine
Railway Company in Chile and those of the Buenos Aires and Pacific and
Argentine Great Western Railways Companies in Mendoza and Buenos Aires,
and also those of the Leopoldina Railway in Brazil. Nor must I fail to
express my obligations to the heads in New York of the firm of Messrs.
W. R. Grace Co., who advised me regarding my journey, and to my friend
Professor Bingham of Yale University, who, familiar with South America
from his own travels and studies, has given me valuable help in many
ways.
I have also to return my respectful thanks to the Governments of Chile
and Brazil, who were good enough to extend to me facilities for travel
on their railways, and to the Governments of Peru, Bolivia, Argentina,
and Uruguay for other courtesies. To many statesmen and scholars in
these six republics, too numerous to mention by name, as also to not a
few of my own fellow-countrymen from Britain and Canada who are there
settled, I am indebted for hospitality, for private acts of kindness,
and for valuable information.
JAMES BRYCE.
JUNE 27, 1912.
NOTE TO REVISED EDITION
This edition has been carefully revised and many corrections have been
made in it.
FEBRUARY 26th, 1913.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE vii
INTRODUCTION xvii
CHAPTER I
THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA
The Part of the Isthmus and the Strait in History 1
The Isthmus of Suez and the Isthmus of Panama: The Route from
Colon to Culebra and Panama 2
View from the Hill of Ancon 9
The Natives of the Isthmus: The San Blas Indians 13
The English Raiders: Drake and Morgan 15
The Canal: Gatun Locks and Lake 19
The Great Cutting at Culebra 24
Administration and Sanitation of the Canal Zone 26
Failure of the French Undertaking due Primarily to Disease 28
Commercial Prospects of the Canal 33
General Impressions made by the Isthmus and the Canal 35
CHAPTER II
THE COAST OF PERU
Cold Climate of the West Coast 37
The Antarctic Current 38
Aridity and Barrenness of the Peruvian Coast 39
Payta: The Guano Islands 40
Lima: General Aspect and Buildings 46
Life and Society in Lima 51
Mollendo and the Peruvian Southern Railway 54
First View of the Andes 56
The Desert of Western Peru 57
The City of Arequipa 60
The Volcano of El Misti 61
Oriental Aspect of Arequipa 64
Character of the People of Arequipa 66
A Story from Colonial Days 69
CHAPTER III
CUZCO AND THE LAND OF THE INCAS
Physical Character of Peru 75
Crossing of the Andes from Arequipa to the Central Plateau of
Lake Titicaca 80
Scenery of the Valley from the Plateau to Cuzco 81
One of the Sources of the Amazon 86
Market Day at Sicuani: The Quichua Indians 88
Cuzco: Its Situation and Aspect 95
The Spanish Buildings at Cuzco 96
The Ancient Buildings: Inca Walls 102
The Prehistoric Fortress of Sacsahuaman 107
Impression made by the Remains of Ancient Peruvian Work 114
Historical Associations of Cuzco 114
[Note on the Fortress Walls of Sacsahuaman] 118
CHAPTER IV
LAKE TITICACA AND THE CENTRAL ANDES
The Central Plateau and the Lake 119
Inhabitants of the Plateau: The Aymará Indians 121
Scenery of Lake Titicaca 124
The Shrine of Copacavana 128
Voyage to the Sacred Islands 130
Koati: The Island of the Moon 131
The Island of the Sun 132
The Bath and Garden of the Inca 133
The Sacred Rock of the Wild Cat 135
View of the Snowy Range of Sorata or Illampu 141
The Lake of Vinamarca 143
Tiahuanaco and its Ruins 144
Impression made by the Ruins 147
Character of the Ancient Peruvian Civilization 152
The Primitive Religion of Peru 156
Government and the Policy of the Incas 160
CHAPTER V
LA PAZ AND THE BOLIVIAN DESERT
Origin of the Bolivian Republic 166
General Physical Character of Bolivia 167
Approach to La Paz: The _Barranca_ 168
Climate of La Paz: The Mountain Sickness or _Soroche_ 171
The City and its Environs 174
Character and Habits of the Bolivian Indians 179
The Plateau from La Paz to Oruro 186
Uyuni: The Great Bolivian Desert 191
Passage through the Andes 198
The Borax Lake and the Volcanoes 199
View of the Western Cordillera 203
The Desert of Atacama 204
CHAPTER VI
CHILE
The Three Regions of Chile 206
Northern Chile: The Nitrate Fields 207
Megillones and Antofagasta 210
Valparaiso 212
Santiago 216
Pedro de Valdivia and the Rock of Santa Lucia 218
Chilean Society and Politics 220
Southern Chile: Its Climate and Scenery 223
The Coast Cities: Concepcion and Talcahuano 225
Lota Valdivia and Corral 227
The Araucanian Indians: Their History, Customs, and Religion 232
Osorno and its German Colony 239
Rio Bueno 242
Attractiveness of Southern Chile 241
Lake Rinihue and the Chilean Forests 244
CHAPTER VII
ACROSS THE ANDES
The Andean Range 248
The Uspallata Pass from Chile into Argentina 250
Construction of the Transandine Railway 251
Scenery on the Chilean Side 253
The Tunnel under the Summit of the Cordillera 256
Scenery on the Argentine Side 256
Aconcagua and Tupungato 257
The City of Mendoza 260
Argentines and Chileans 264
Return across the Mountains and Ascent to the Cumbre 267
The Christ of the Andes 269
Observations on the Scenery of the Andes in General 271
Comparison with the Himalayas 276
[Note on the Passage of the Andes, in 1817, by the Army of
General San Martin] 280
CHAPTER VIII
THE STRAITS OF MAGELLAN
Discovery of the Straits, and Circumnavigation of the Globe,
by Magellan 284
Voyage of Sir Francis Drake 286
The Coast of Southern Chile: The Sea-birds 286
Approach to, and Entrance of, the Straits 290
The Scenery of the Western Half of the Straits 291
Punta Arenas and Tierra del Fuego 300
The Eastern Half of the Straits 304
General Observations on the Character of the Straits 305
Their Historical Importance 307
The Falkland Isles, their Character and Products 308
Their History 311
Their Scenery 313
CHAPTER IX
ARGENTINA
The Approach to Buenos Aires 315
Aspect of the City 316
Society in Buenos Aires 318
Physical Character of Argentina 324
Inhabitants of Argentina: The Gaucho 327
Agriculture and Ranching 329
The Process of Settlement: Labour 330
The Scenery of the Pampas 334
Economic Prospects of Argentina 336
The European Immigrants 338
Character and Tendencies of Society in Argentina 341
Argentina the Most Modern of South American Countries 346
CHAPTER X
URUGUAY
How Uruguay became an Independent Republic 349
Resources of the Country 350
The City of Montevideo 351
Population of Uruguay: Immigrants and Natives 355
A Revolution in Uruguay 356
The Whites and the Reds 357
Causes of the Revolutionary Habit 358
Prosperity of Uruguay 362
CHAPTER XI
BRAZIL
How Brazil fell to the Portuguese 366
Physical Features of the Different Parts of the Country 368
Voyage from Montevideo to Santos 370
Santos and the Railway to São Paulo 372
The City of São Paulo and its People 374
Approach to Rio de Janeiro 377
Aspect of Rio: The Bay and the Mountains 378
Scenery of the Environs of Rio 382
Petropolis the "Hill Station" of Rio 384
Excursion through the Mountains 386
A Brazilian Forest 390
Naval Mutiny at Rio 395
Economic Resources of Brazil 402
The People: German and Italian Immigrants 405
The Negroes and Indians 407
Recent History of Brazil 410
Character and Tendencies of the Brazilians 416
The Future of Brazil 420
CHAPTER XII
THE RISE OF NEW NATIONS
The Colonial Empire of Spain divided into Sixteen Republics or
Nations 423
What is a Nation? 424
Process by which New Nations Arise 426
The Administrative Divisions of the Colonies the Basis of the
Division into Republics 427
Influences which differentiate Nations 429
Geographical Position 429
Physical Environment: Climate 430
The Aborigines: Their Number and Character 432
The Struggle for Independence and the Civil Wars 434
Recent Economic Development: Immigration 437
Which of the Republics have become Nations? 438
Chile and Argentina: Mexico, Peru, Brazil 441
The Caribbean and Central American Republics 441
Does there exist a Common Sentiment of Spanish-American
Nationality? 444
Will the Present Political Divisions be Maintained? 447
Prospects of International Peace in South America 448
CHAPTER XIII
THE RELATIONS OF RACES IN SOUTH AMERICA
Importance of the Aboriginal Element in Spanish-American
Countries 454
How the Native Tribes came to Survive 455
Probable Present Numbers of the Indian Population 458
The Indians in Peru and Bolivia 460
Present State of these Indians, Social and Religious 460
Ulloa's Report on their Condition in the Eighteenth Century 463
Universal Illiteracy of the Indians: Their Civil and Political
Status 465
Relations of Indians and Whites: No "Colour Line" in Latin
America 470
How the Presence of the Aborigines has affected the Whites 475
The Negroes in Brazil 479
Three General Conclusions regarding the Native Indians of South
America 480
It is not certain that they have injured the White Race by
Intermixture 481
Demoralization of the Peruvian Indians by the Spanish Conquest,
and Subsequent Oppression 481
Racial Repugnance not a Universal Phenomenon in the Relations
of Peoples of Different Colour 482
CHAPTER XIV
THE TWO AMERICAS AND THE RELATION OF SOUTH AMERICA TO EUROPE
Origin of the Name "America" 484
How it came to be applied to Two Continents 486
Some Physical Similarities of the Two Continents 488
Some Similarities in their History 489
"Teutonic" America and "Latin" America 490
Divergent History of the Two Americas 492
The Indians: The Mines: The Settlers 493
Different Methods of Government 494
The Two Wars of Independence 496
The English Colonies held together while the Spanish split Up 499
What "Teutonic" and Latin America have in Common 500
The Contrasts between them are More Important 504
Present Attitude of Spanish Americans to North Americans 507
Real Affinities of Spanish America are with Some European
Peoples 512
Sympathy and Intercourse with Spain not very Close 513
Relations are Most Intimate with France 518
Are the South American Peoples a New Group, with a New
"Racial Type"? 520
CHAPTER XV
THE CONDITIONS OF POLITICAL LIFE IN SPANISH-AMERICAN REPUBLICS
European Views of Spanish America during and after the War
of Independence 524
Physical or Geographical Conditions affecting the Political
Life 527
Racial Conditions: The Aborigines 528
Economic and Social Conditions 532
Historical Conditions in the Colonial Period 534
Historical Conditions during and since the War of Independence 536
The Peoples of the Republics began with no Experience in the
Methods of Free Government 537
Some Revolutionary Leaders did not approve Democracy 538
Would Monarchy or Oligarchy have been Better? 540
Differences between the existing Republics: Three Classes of
States 541
Some have truly Republican Governments 543
Influences making for Political Progress 546
European Judgments on Spanish-American Republic unduly
Severe 550
CHAPTER XVI
SOME REFLECTIONS AND FORECASTS
Rapid filling up of the Cultivable Areas of the World 552
Regions available for Settlement in South America 555
The Temperate Regions 556
The _Selvas_ of the Amazonian Plain 558
Possible Future Population of South America 563
Elements, Aboriginal and White, in the Population 564
Phenomena of Race Intermixture in South America 566
No Predominant Type in the South American Peoples 568
Spanish Americans misjudged because their Conditions at Time
of Independence were not Understood 570
Evidences of Social and Political Advancement 573
South America has suffered from Want of Intellectual Contact
with Other Countries 574
The Spanish Race stronger on the Practical than on the
Intellectually Creative Side 577
Backwardness of Knowledge and Intelligence in the Rural Parts
of Spanish America 580
Decline in the Influence of the Church and Religion 582
Continued Vigour of the Spanish-American Race 584
NOTE I. Some Books upon Latin America 587
NOTE II. A Few Remarks on travelling in South America 588
INDEX 591
MAPS. South America.
The Isthmus of Panama.
Parts of Peru and Bolivia.
The Straits of Magellan.
Parts of Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil.
INTRODUCTION
Whoever read as a boy the books of old travellers in the Andes, such
as Humboldt's _Aspects of Nature_, or pored over such accounts of
the primitive American peoples as are given in Prescott's _Conquest
of Peru_ must have longed to visit some day the countries that fired
his imagination. These had been my experiences, and to them there was
subsequently added a curiosity to learn the causes which produced so
many revolutions and civil wars in Spanish America, and, still later, a
sense that these countries, some of them issuing from a long period of
turbulence, were becoming potent economic factors in the modern world.
So when after many years the opportunity of having four clear months
for a journey to South America presented itself, I spent those months
in seeing as much as I could within the time, and was able to make some
observations and form certain impressions regarding the seven republics
I visited. These observations and impressions are contained in the
following pages. They are, of course, merely first impressions, but the
impressions which travel makes on a fresh mind have their value if they
are tested by subsequent study and by being submitted to persons who
know the country thoroughly. I have tried so to test these impressions
of mine, and hope they may be of service to those who desire to learn
something about South America, but have not time to peruse the many
books of travel that have been written about each of its countries.
The chief points of interest which these countries have for Europeans
and North Americans may be summed up as follows:--
1. The aspects of nature.
2. The inhabitants, the white part of whom are of Spanish origin,
except the Brazilians, who come from Portugal.
3. The economic resources of the several countries.
4. The prospects for the development of industry and commerce.
5. The relics of prehistoric civilization.
6. The native Indian population.
7. The conditions of political life in the several republics.
It may be convenient that I should explain how far and in what order
each of these topics is dealt with.
The first eleven chapters of the book contain a description of what
I saw of scenery and of social and economic phenomena in the seven
republics of Panama, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and
Brazil, and in these chapters the first three of the above-mentioned
subjects are dealt with when and as each country is described. It is
Nature that chiefly engages the traveller's mind in Peru and Bolivia,
as it is economic development which interests him in Argentina and
Uruguay. In Chile and Brazil he must be always thinking of both.
The fourth topic has been treated so fully by many writers who have
brought special knowledge to it and have written professedly for the
information of business men, that I have not thought it necessary to
fill this book with statistical tables or, indeed, to do more than
indicate the possibilities for commercial development or agricultural
immigration which the natural resources of each country seem to promise.
It is only in Peru and Bolivia that any prehistoric monuments exist.
Some of the most important and interesting of these I saw, and in
describing them I have endeavoured to convey an idea of the character
of the ancient Peruvian civilization (if that name can properly be
applied to it) and of the people who produced it. This is done in
Chapters III, IV, and V.
Only in Peru, Bolivia, and Chile did I have opportunities of seeing the
native Indians. In the two former states they constitute a part of the
total population far larger than in any other state (except Paraguay):
they are nominally Christians, and they lead a settled agricultural
life. In Chile there is only one considerable Indian tribe remaining,
the famous Araucanians. Of these warriors, of the Quichuas in Peru and
of the Aymarás in Bolivia, some account will be found in Chapters III
to VI.
In the above-mentioned eleven descriptive chapters I have endeavoured
to individualize, so to speak, the chief countries of South America, so
as to bring out the chief characteristics, natural and human, of each
of them.
But marked as are the differences between the various republics, they
have all something in common, something that belongs to South America
as opposed to Europe or North America or Australia. There are also
certain general questions affecting the whole Continent which present
themselves to the traveller's mind and need to be discussed upon broad
and general lines. To these questions the last five chapters of the
book have been devoted. One chapter endeavours to indicate the causes
which have divided the vast Spanish-American dominion (including
Mexico and Central America) as it stood in A.D. 1810 into the sixteen
independent republics of to-day, some of which have become, others of
which are becoming, true nations with marked national characteristics.
Another chapter deals with the relations to the white population of the
aborigines in the Spanish countries and of the negroes in Brazil, the
only state in which negroes are numerous. It is a subject of study all
the more interesting because these relations are altogether different
from those borne by the European element to the coloured races in the
British colonies, in India, and in the United States of North America,
and also because the intermixture of races which is now going on in
South America suggests physiological and ethnological problems of high
interest.
A third chapter (Chapter XIV) briefly compares the conditions of
settlement and of government which determined the course of economic
and political development in North and in South America respectively
and enquires how far the latter Continent is to be considered any more
closely related to the former than it is to Europe. Is there, in fact,
such a thing as that which the word Pan-Americanism is intended to
describe, or does the expression denote an aspiration rather than a
fact?
Of the political history of these republics very little is said in this
book, and of their current politics nothing at all. That is a topic
on which it would not be fitting for me to enter. But in travelling
through the seven countries, in observing their physical features
and the character of their people, and the state of knowledge and
education among them, as well as in reading accounts of the kind of
administration which the Spanish Crown gave them during nearly three
centuries, I was struck by the influence which all these facts must
have had upon the free governments which the Revolutionary leaders
tried to set up when they broke away from the mother country. The
history of Spanish America since 1810 cannot be understood or fairly
judged, without taking these things into account. They have been the
fundamental and determinative conditions of political life in these
countries; and to them Chapter XV has been devoted.
In the last Chapter (XVI) I have touched upon several subjects relating
to the South American lands and peoples in general for which no
appropriate earlier place could be found, and have indulged in a few
conjectures as to the future both of the several states and of the
Continent as a whole. These are not meant as predictions, but rather as
suggestions of possibilities which may serve to set others thinking.
Lest some of the views presented, especially those regarding the native
races and political conditions should be deemed unduly optimistic,
let me try to meet any such criticism by a few words on optimism in
general.
Pessimism is easier than optimism, as it is easier to destroy than to
construct. There was an old dictum in the Middle Ages, "_Omnia tendunt
naturaliter in non esse_,"[1] and Mephistopheles in Goethe's _Faust_
tells us that
Alles was entsteht
Ist werth dass es zu Grunde geht.[2]
If pessimism is easy, the more need to stand on guard against it.
The duty of a traveller, or a historian, or a philosopher is, of
course, to reach and convey the exact truth, and any tendency either
to lighten or to darken the picture is equally to be condemned. But
where there is room for doubt, and wherever that which may be called
the "temperamental equation" of the observer comes in, an optimistic
attitude would seem to be the safer, that is to say, likely to be
nearer to the truth. We are all prone to see faults rather than merits,
and in making this remark I do not forget the so-called "log-rolling
critics," because with them the question is of what the critic says,
not of what he sees, which may be something quite different. If this
maxim holds true, it is especially needed when a traveller is judging
a foreign country, for the bias always present in us which favours our
own national ways and traits makes us judge the faults of other nations
more severely than we do those with which we are familiar. As this
unconscious factor often tends to darken the picture that a traveller
draws, it is safer for him, if in doubt, to throw in a little light so
as to secure a just result. Moreover, we are disposed, when we deal
with another country, to be unduly impressed by the defects we actually
see and to forget to ask what is, after all, the really important
question, whether things are getting better or worse. Is it an ebbing
or a flowing tide that we see? Even in reflecting on the past of our
own country, which we know better than we do that of other countries,
we are apt, in noting the emergence of new dangers, to forget how many
old dangers have disappeared. Much more is this kind of error likely to
affect us in the case of a country whose faults repel us more than do
our own national faults, and whose recuperative forces we may overlook
or undervalue.
Such considerations as these have made me believe that the natural
propensity of a West European or North American traveller to judge
Spanish Americans by his own standards needs to be corrected not
only by making allowance for differences of intellect and character,
but also by a comprehension of the history of these peoples and
of the difficulties, many of them due to causes outside their own
control, which have encompassed and entangled them ever since their
ancestors first set foot in the Western world. Whoever compares these
difficulties as they stand to-day with those of a century ago will find
grounds not only for more lenient judgments than most Europeans have
passed, but also for brighter hopes.
Neither in this matter, however, nor anywhere in the chapters which
deal with the social and political conditions of South America have I
ventured to dogmatize. My aim has rather been to start questions and
to indicate various sides from which South American problems may be
approached. The interest of these new countries lies largely in the
fact that while some problems already familiar to the Old World, have
here taken on new aspects, others appear here almost for the first time
in history. Some of them involve phenomena of race growth and race
intermixture for the investigation of which the data we possess are
still insufficient. Others turn upon the still unascertained capacity
of European races for working and thriving in tropical countries. It
may take many years before science can tell us half of what we desire
to know regarding the economic possibilities of the central regions of
the Continent, for the development of which no labour is now available.
The future of the temperate South is more certain, for all the material
conditions that make for prosperity in North America and Australia
are present there also. These countries will be the home of rich and
populous nations, and possibly of great nations. The most interesting
of all the questions which a journey in South America suggests are
those which concern the growth of these young nations. What type of
manhood will they develop? What place in the world will they ultimately
hold? They need fear no attacks from the powers of the Northern
Hemisphere, and they have abundant resources within. Their future is in
their own hands.
SOUTH AMERICA
CHAPTER I
THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA
South America is bounded at its northern end by an isthmus and at its
southern by a strait. They are the two gateways by which the western
side of the Continent, cut off from the western and central portions by
a long and lofty mountain range, can be approached from the Atlantic.
It was by crossing the Isthmus that Vasco Nuñez de Balboa discovered
the South Sea. It was by penetrating the Strait that Magellan, seven
years later, discovered that this South Sea was a vast ocean stretching
all the way to the coasts of Asia. In old Spanish days all the commerce
of the west coast passed over the Isthmus,[3] but when the days of
steam navigation arrived, that commerce passed through Magellan's
Strait. Now the Isthmus itself is to be turned into a strait and will
be a channel for sea-borne trade, the main gateway to the West.
An isthmus and a strait are, to the historical geographer and to
the geographical historian, the most interesting things with which
geographical science has to deal. Commerce and travel and naval warfare
concentrate themselves at the spot where a narrow channel connects wide
seas, and the strip of land which severs two seas from one another
interposes a barrier to water-borne trade and turns it off into other
directions. It becomes a point the control of which can stop the march
of armies, and it furnishes a central stronghold whence ships can go
forth to threaten the neighbouring coasts. Thus every strait and every
isthmus has a high commercial importance, and almost always a political
importance also, since lines of commerce have usually been, and are now
more than ever, potent factors in human affairs, while the command of a
water passage for fleets, or that of a land passage for armies, may be
of capital importance in war.
The Eastern Hemisphere has an isthmus which has been significant for
world commerce and for world history almost from the beginning of
civilization. It is the Isthmus of Suez. So the Western Hemisphere
has its isthmus of supreme importance,--that of Panama. It is a link
between continents and a barrier between seas, which, though its
history is far shorter than is that of Suez, yet has been at some
moments in the last four centuries, and may be still more hereafter, of
high significance for the movements of the world.
There are some notable points of similarity between these two
isthmuses. Their breadth is not very different,--Suez sixty miles,
Panama about fifty-four. The shortest line across each runs nearly due
north and south. The continents which each unites are gigantic. Each
lies in what is, or was till quite lately, a practically uninhabited
country.
Here, however, the likeness ends; and we come to points of contrast
that are more remarkable. The Isthmus of Suez is flat as a table
from one end to the other; that of Panama is covered with high and
generally steep hills. Suez is an arid waste, where there is not a
brook and scarcely even a well, and by consequence not a tree, nor
any growing thing save a few thin and thorny shrubs. Panama has a
tremendous rainfall in places, varying from one hundred and forty
inches a year on the north side to sixty on the south, and is covered
with wood so dense that roads have to be not only hewn through the
forest but defended by incessant cutting against the efforts of a
prolific nature, always seeking to reassert her rights. Having a keen,
dry, desert air, the whole Suez region is a healthy one, where man
need fear disease only in those few spots which he has in recent years
brought under irrigation. Panama had for centuries a climate so deadly
that even passing travellers feared to halt more than a few hours on
either side of the Isthmus. Yellow fever, intermittent and remittent
fevers, and all sorts of other tropical maladies made it their
favourite home.
A still more remarkable contrast, however, between these two necks of
land lies in the part they have respectively played in human affairs.
The Isthmus of Panama must, in far-off prehistoric days, have been the
highway along which those wandering tribes whose forefathers had passed
in their canoes from northeastern Asia along the Aleutian Isles into
Alaska found their way, after many centuries, into the vast spaces of
South America. But its place in the annals of mankind during the four
centuries that have elapsed since Balboa gazed from a mountain top
rising out of the forest upon the far-off waters of the South Sea has
been small, indeed, compared to that which the Isthmus of Suez has held
from the beginning of history. It echoed to the tread of the armies of
Thothmes and Rameses marching forth on their invasions of western Asia.
Along the edge of it Israel fled forth before the hosts of Pharaoh.
First the Assyrian and afterwards the Persian hosts poured across it
to conquer Egypt; and over its sands Bonaparte led his regiments to
Palestine in that bold adventure which was stopped at St. Jean d'Acre.
It has been one of the great highways for armies for forty centuries,
as the canal cut through it is now one of the great highways of
commerce.
The turn of the Isthmus of Panama has now come, and curiously enough it
is the Isthmus of Suez that brought that turn, for it was the digging
of a ship canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, and the vast
expansion of Eastern trade which followed, that led to the revival of
the old designs, mooted as far back as the days of the Emperor Charles
the Fifth, of piercing the American Isthmus. Thus the comparison of
the two isthmuses becomes now more interesting than ever, for our
generation will watch to see whether the commerce and politics of the
western world will be affected by this new route which is now being
opened, as those of the Old World have been affected by the achievement
of Ferdinand de Lesseps.
So many books have been written, and so many more will be written,
about the engineering of the Panama Canal and about its commercial
possibilities, that of these very little need be said in such a sketch
as this. But as everybody is already curious, and will, two years
hence, be still more curious regarding the region it traverses, I
shall try to convey some sort of notion of the physical aspects of the
Isthmus and of the impressions its past and its present make on the
traveller's mind. In taking the reader with me across the neck of land,
I shall in the first instance say nothing of the works of the canal
which I saw in course of execution, but will ask him to remember that
it runs, as does the Trans-Isthmian railway, from north to south, the
coast-line both on the Atlantic and on the Pacific side trending in
this region east and west.[4]
Approaching in the steamer from Europe or New York across the Caribbean
Sea one sees low hills rising gently from the shore, fringed with palms
and dotted with small white houses half hidden among the trees. In
front, on an islet now joined to the mainland, is the town of Colon, a
new town, with a statue of Christopher Columbus "protecting" a female
Indian figure of America, but no buildings of interest and little
history, for it is only sixty years old, built as the terminal point
of the railway. The old fortified ports where the Spanish galleons
used to lie at anchor in former days, Nombre de Dios and Puerto Bello,
stand farther to the east. Behind the town, higher hills, covered with
those thick, light green woods that characterize the tropics, cut off
the view to the south. No depression in the land is visible. There is
nothing to suggest that another ocean lies beyond, only fifty miles
away, and that here the great backbone which traverses two continents
for many thousands of miles sinks to a point a few hundreds of feet
above sea level.
The traveller on landing steps into the railroad car, and after running
for three miles along the shore of the shallow bay of Limon into which
the Canal is to issue, strikes in four miles more the valley of the
Chagres River. Here is the point (to be described later) at which the
huge Gatun Dam is being built across that valley to flood it and turn
it into a navigable lake. Thence the line keeps in the same general
south-southeast direction on the east side of the Chagres River,
parallel to its course. The Chagres, a muddy and rather languid stream,
has in the dry season about as much water as the Scottish Tweed and
in the wet season rather more than the Potomac and much more than the
Shannon. There are few stations on the way, and at first no dwellings,
for the country was uninhabited till the work of canal construction
began. Morasses are crossed, and everywhere there is on each side a
dense, dark forest. So deep and spongy are the swamps that in places
it has been found impossible to fill them up or to lay more than one
set of rails upon the surface. So dense is the forest, the spaces
between the tree trunks filled by shrubs and the boughs bound together
by climbing plants into a wall of living green, that one cannot see
more than a few yards into the thicket, and can force a way through it
only by the help of the _machete_,--that long, cutlass-like knife which
people carry in Spanish America. Hardly a trail running into the woods
is seen, and a mile or two back the wild cats and monkeys, and their
terrible enemies, the anacondas or boa constrictors, have the place all
to themselves.
After some twenty-three miles of this sort of country, beautiful
when the outer boughs of the trees are gay with brilliant blossoms,
and pendulous orchids sway in the breeze between their stems, but in
September rather monotonous in color, the railway crosses and leaves
the Chagres River, whose valley turns northeast far in among higher
hills. The line continues to run southward, rising gently between
slopes from which the wood has been lately cut away so that one can see
the surrounding landscape. All around there is a sort of tossing sea
of miniature mountains--I call them mountains because of their steep
slopes and pointed crests, though few of them exceed a thousand feet
in height. These are set so close together that hardly a dozen yards
of level ground can be found between the bases of their declivities,
and are disposed so irregularly that they seem as if the product of
scattered outbreaks and uplifts of igneous rock. Their sides are
clothed and their tops plumed with so thick a growth of wood that the
eye cannot discover crags or cliffs, if any there be, and the tops of
all are practically unapproachable, because no trails have yet been
cut, except to one conspicuous summit. This one rises boldly to a
height of about 1200 feet, and has received the name of Balboa Hill,
because from it alone in this region--so one is told--can both oceans
in a season of fair weather be descried. The gallant Vasco Nuñez
deserves the honour of being thus commemorated; but it is to be feared
that before long the legend will have struck root among those who dwell
here, and will be repeated to those who pass along the canal, that it
was from this height, and not from a peak in Darien, seventy or eighty
miles farther to the east, that the bold adventurer first looked out
over the shining expanse of the South Sea.
We are now more than halfway to the Pacific and may pause to survey
the landscape. Though there is moisture everywhere, one sees no water,
for neither ocean is visible, the Chagres is hidden among the folds
of the hills, and the brooks at the valley bottoms are insignificant.
But otherwise it is cheerful and pleasant in its bright green and its
varied lines,--a country in which a man might be content to live,
faintly reminding one of the Trossachs in Scotland by the number of
steep little peaks crowded together and by the profusion of wood. The
luxuriance of nature is, however, far greater than in any temperate
clime, and the trees have that feathery lightness which belongs to the
tropics, their tops springing like green bubbles into the soft blue air.
Here, at a place called Culebra, is the highest part of the crossing
from ocean to ocean, 110 feet above sea-level; and as it was here that
the deepest cutting had to be made for the canal it is here that the
headquarters of the engineering staff has been fixed. Of the cutting
more anon. The railway follows a devious course among the hills,
rattling here and there through cuttings in hard igneous rock, and in
a few miles, descending gently, it passes out into a wide valley, the
farther end of which, to the south, is open, with a bold hill guarding
it on the east side and several more distant rocky eminences visible
far away against the horizon. The hill is Ancon, overlooking Panama
city on the one side, and, on the other, the bay which the canal
enters. The eminences are islands lying out in the Pacific. Being now
quite down on the level of the ocean, we do not see its waters till the
railway, passing along the edge of a brackish tidal swamp, reaches the
city of Panama, forty-six miles from Colon.
As the Pacific side of the Isthmus is much the most picturesque part of
the whole, and impresses itself most on the imagination, the visitor
who desires to enjoy the scenery and grasp the configuration of land
and sea, ought to climb, if he is an active walker, to the top of
the hill of Ancon, on the lower slopes of which, rising just above
Panama city, are the United States government offices and the villas
of its officials. Steep everywhere, and in parts slippery also, is the
foot-path that leads over pastures and through thickets to the top of
the hill, some six hundred feet high. But it is worth while to make the
ascent, for from the summit one obtains an ample prospect worthy of the
historic greatness of the spot.
From this breezy height let the traveller turn his eyes first to the
north, and look back over that maze of low forest-covered mountains
through which he has passed from Colon and which form the watershed
between the two seas. No more from this side of the Isthmus than from
the other does one discern any depression in the watershed, any break
in the range sufficient to indicate that at this point there is an easy
passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The hollows through which
both railroad and canal pass are hidden deep in the folds of the hills,
which stand so thick together that it is hard to believe any waterway
could ever be carved out between them and impossible to tell the spot
where the cutting is being made.
Very different is the view when the gaze is turned eastward along the
far-winding bays and promontories of the Gulf of Panama. There the
coast is for a long space flat, and a plain runs back toward distant
hills. Beyond this plain other ranges rise to the southeast, bordering
the Pacific till they sink below the horizon opposite the Pearl
Islands. Somewhere among those ranges is the height to which Balboa
climbed and whence he made the great discovery; somewhere along those
shores the place where, clad in armour, he strode into the waves, and
with sword drawn, took possession of the sea on behalf of the king of
Spain. It is rather across that plain that any one looking from this
side might fancy the lowest passage from sea to sea would be found. Yet
not there, but much farther to the southeast, far behind the hills,
in the Gulf of Darien, there is a point still lower, where between
the Atrato River which falls into the Caribbean and the River San
Juan running to the Pacific a few miles of cut would enable a ship
to pass from sea to sea. Now let the traveller turn round and face
to the west. His eyes will follow a long mountain chain which rises
high and bold from the opposite shore of the Gulf of Panama and runs
out southwest until it too is lost to sight beneath the far horizon.
In front, a group of rocky isles lies basking in the sunny sea. Just
beneath the Ancon hill, at its eastern foot, the little city of Panama
stands on its promontory, a mass of grey, red-roofed houses with a
half-demolished Spanish fort of the eighteenth century guarding the
shallow roadstead, while on the opposite side of the hill, at the base
of its steep slopes, is the mouth of the Canal.
The landscape spread out under this hill of Ancon is the finest in all
the Isthmian region. The northern side at Colon, although pretty with
its abundant verdure, is commonplace; but here there is a view which
appeals at once to the eye and to the imagination, ranging over vast
stretches of land and sea, rich with varied colour, bringing together
the past and the future. Over these smooth ocean plains, which the
Spaniards, accustomed to their own stormy Atlantic, called the Peaceful
Sea, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa looked eagerly out as he planned that
expedition to Peru which the jealous cruelty of Pedrarias, the Spanish
viceroy, cut short. Over them the less worthy but more fortunate
Pizarro sailed to those far southern lands, where he won, in two
years, an empire vaster than that which in the Old World obeyed his
sovereign, Charles the Fifth. Backward and forward across these waters
came the fleets that bore to the south swarms of fierce adventurers
to plunder the native peoples, and that brought back the treasures
which supported the European wars of Spain and helped to work her
ruin. Three miles off there can be just discerned amid the trees the
ancient cathedral tower of the now ruined city of old Panama, where
those fleets used to anchor till the English buccaneer Morgan sacked
and destroyed the place in 1679. And just beneath, on the opposite side
of the hill from these traces of the vanished colonial empire of Spain,
the long mole that is to shield the mouth of the Canal is rising, and
the steamships lying along the wharves, and cars standing beside them
on the railway tracks, presage a commerce vaster than ever was seen in
the great days of Spain, for they speak of the passage of men from all
the nations along the new waterway through these forests and out over
this sea to the ends of the earth. Here, as at the Straits of Gibraltar
and on the Bosphorus, nature and history have joined to give delight
for the eyes, and to the mind musings on the past and dim forecasting
visions of the future.
Save for these few points where human dwellings are seen,--the little
Spanish city below and the offices and warehouses that mark the
beginnings of the new commercial port and some houses on the islets
in the bay, where the inhabitants of Panama seek in summer a cooler
air,--it is a lonely landscape, with scarcely a sign of life on land,
and as yet few ships flecking the water. The region has always been
thinly peopled and its tribes never reached the semi-civilization of
the Maya peoples of Yucatan, Honduras, and Guatemala to the north of
them, nor of the Chibchas of Bogota to the south. There are, anyhow,
no traces of prehistoric progress here, though some have been found
in Costa Rica. The aborigines were not numerous in this region,
and, after the Spaniards came, were quickly reduced by the attacks
which gold-seeking adventurers made upon them. Thus one hears of but
few now, except at one place, called San Blas, on the shore of the
Caribbean Sea, some forty miles east of Colon. There an Indian tribe
has kept itself quite apart from the white intruders, having maintained
a practical independence both of Spanish viceroys and republican
presidents of Colombia. These Indians are short, strong men, good
sailors and fine fighters, men of the same stock that repulsed the
first settlers whom Columbus planted near by on his second voyage,
and so jealous of their freedom and their own ways that they will not
suffer a white stranger to spend the night in one of their villages.
They are reported to be still heathens, having their own medicine
men, the efficiency of whom is secured by a rule which terminates
the professional career together with the life of a practitioner
who has lost to death seven patients in succession. These Indians
come to Colon in their canoes to trade, and show themselves passably
friendly to the Americans there, though less effusively so than their
ancestors were to the English in those far-away days when they guided
English buccaneers across the Isthmus to pounce upon their Spanish
enemies at Panama. When in 1698 the Scottish colonists arrived on
their ill-starred expedition to found a colony at Darien, the San Bias
men welcomed them with open arms and shewed their good feeling by
frequently coming on board and drinking a great deal of liquor. These
kindly dispositions lasted down till our own time, for a tale goes
that in one of their struggles against the Colombians they declared
themselves subjects of Queen Victoria. The Republic of Panama, having
plenty of troubles of its own, wisely leaves them alone.
As there are few Indians now in the narrowest part of the Isthmus, so
also there are few white people. The Spaniards never tried to settle
the country, though they built towns here and there on the coast for
trade. There was neither gold nor silver to attract adventurers. The
land was covered with jungle, and there was a lack of native labourers
to be enslaved and set to clear and till it. The jealous policy of
the home government excluded the subjects of all other powers, so
most of this region remained a wilderness, unimproved, and parts of
it unexplored. A paved road was constructed across the Isthmus from
old Panama, the town built by Pedrarias when he crossed to the Pacific
side in 1520, to Nombre de Dios, which became the chief port on the
Atlantic side; and along this road pack mule trains carried the silver
that had come up from Peru to be shipped for Cadiz or Vigo in those
great galleons for which the English seamen used to lie in wait. On the
Atlantic coast there was held once a year a great fair which lasted six
weeks, and to which trading folk came by sea from far and wide. Nearly
all the manufactured goods which were consumed in Peru and all down the
west coast were sold and bought here. Little else broke the monotonous
annals of these remote provinces except the exploits of the English
sea-rovers who carried on the war of Protestantism against Spain for
the benefit of their own pockets. Sir Francis Drake, the least sordid
and most gallant among them, began his exploits by establishing himself
in a creek on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus, and thence took Nombre
de Dios with a ridiculously small force, and laid ambushes for the
silver-carrying mule trains that crossed from Panama, raiding at
intervals such Spanish ports as his small force enabled him to capture.
In one early expedition, he climbed a tree on a hilltop, and seeing
the Pacific from it, fell on his knees and prayed God to give him life
till he could sail upon that sea in an English ship--a prayer which
was amply fulfilled when he issued from the Straits of Magellan and
ravaged the coasts of Peru in 1578. In the last of all his cruises it
was in his ship off Puerto Bello that he died in 1596. Eighty years
later, Morgan, the famous English buccaneer, gathered a large force
of adventurers and seafaring ruffians, crossed the Isthmus by sailing
in small boats up the Chagres and thence after a short land journey
falling upon Panama, which he took and pillaged, bringing back his
booty to the Caribbean Sea. The city was burned, whether by him or by
the Spaniards remains in doubt, and thereafter it lay deserted.
Thirty years after Morgan's raid the commercial possibilities of the
Isthmus fascinated a Scotsman who had more than the usual fervour
and less than the usual caution of his nation. William Paterson, the
founder of the Bank of England, led a colony, chiefly composed of
Scottish people, and well supplied with Scottish ministers, to a place
near Acla in the Gulf of Darien, on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus,
one hundred miles southeast of Colon, meaning to make it a great centre
of trade over both oceans. They went out, however, imperfectly equipped
and ignorant of climatic conditions. Many perished from disease; King
William III gave them no support; the Spaniards at last attacked and
compelled the surrender of the few who remained. Thereafter nobody
disturbed the subjects of the Catholic king. New Panama, planted in
a better site where the roadstead is a little deeper, although too
shallow for the ocean liners of our own day, continued to enjoy a
certain prosperity as the gateway to all western South America, for
there was and could be no land transit through the trackless forests
and rugged mountains that lie along the coast between the Isthmus and
the Equator. But the decline and decay of the colonial empire of Spain
under the most ill-conceived and ill-administered scheme of government
that selfishness and stupidity ever combined to devise, steadily
reduced the importance of the city. Nothing was done to develop the
country, which remained, outside Panama and a few other ports, an
unprofitable solitude. Neither did the extinction of the rule of Spain,
which came quietly here because the local governor did not resist it,
make any difference. Occupied with domestic broils, the new republic,
first called New Granada and now Colombia, had not the capital nor
the intelligence nor the energy to improve the country or develop the
commercial possibilities of the Isthmus. This was a task reserved for
children of the race which had produced Drake and Morgan.
Thus we come down to the events which have given Panama its present
importance. In 1846 Mexico was forced to cede to the United States, as
the price of peace, the territories which now constitute the States
of California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico. Soon afterwards
gold was discovered in California, and a great inrush of settlers
followed. There was urgent need for some shorter and safer route to
San Francisco than the voyage round Cape Horn or the waggon trail over
plains and mountains from the Missouri. Three enterprising Americans
obtained in 1848 a concession of the right to build a railway across
the Isthmus. The line was opened in 1855, and had, till taken over by
the United States government, paid higher dividends continuously (an
average down to 1895 of about 15 per cent per annum) than any other
line in the world. Being exposed to no competition, it could charge
what fares it pleased. A better service of passenger steamers began to
run from Panama southward as well as northward; and thenceforward,
despite its deadly climate, the Isthmus became a world highway.
Though the subsequent opening of railroads across the North American
continent reduced the passenger traffic from the eastern United States
to California via Panama, the goods or freight traffic continued;
and as trade to western South America increased, so the old idea of
constructing an interoceanic canal took more definite shape and led to
the propounding of scheme after scheme. Finally, in 1878, the success
which Ferdinand de Lesseps had achieved at Suez encouraged him to form
a company in France to make a sea-level waterway through the Isthmus.
This company, formed without sufficient preliminary investigation
of the conditions and the cost, collapsed in 1889, having exhausted
its funds. A second one, formed in 1894 to resume and complete the
enterprise, failed in its turn, after spending many millions, and in
1904 transferred all its rights and interests, together with its plans
and its machinery, to the United States government, who, after about
two years usefully spent in examining the problem they had to face,
began in 1907 that effective work of digging and lock-building which
they expect to complete in 1913. They had for some time been trying
to obtain a grant from the republic of Colombia of the strip of land
required for the excavation of the Canal, but could not secure terms
which they thought reasonable. Then, in 1903, a revolt took place at
Panama against the authority of Colombia, and the new republic of
Panama, which forthwith emerged, gave to the United States a perpetual
lease of a strip of ten miles wide, being the space through which the
purposed canal was to run. This strip--now called the Canal Zone--is
forty-five miles long, with an area of about 448 square miles. The
United States Government is practically supreme in it,--though it
has been held not to be a part of the United States for the purposes
of the Constitution,--and rules it by a Commission under the War
Department, being also owner of more than two-thirds of its surface.
In return for the lease it has paid a large sum to the little republic
and guaranteed its independence. With the strip it has also acquired
four small islands, deemed valuable strategically, which lie a little
way off the shore opposite the Pacific end of the Canal. They are now
to be fortified to protect the approach. The colonial city, with its
picturesque fort looking out over the sea, its pretty little plazas
planted with trees, its winding old-fashioned streets and big dark
churches, stands within the Canal Zone, but is administered by its
own government, being the capital of this smallest of all the South
American republics. The poorer classes occupy themselves with fishing
and sitting in the shade, the upper classes with politics. There is
hardly any cultivated land near, but it is hoped that on the high
undulating ground some miles to the west the cultivation of vegetables
and fruits and whatever else passing vessels may need will presently be
established.
Of the Canal itself a few words must now be said, just enough to convey
some preliminary general notion of it to those who two years hence,
when the time for its formal opening arrives, will be deluged with
details.
It will be fifty miles in length, from deep water to deep water, though
only forty from tide-end to tide-end. The minimum bottom width will be
three hundred feet, the minimum depth forty-one feet, the breadth and
depth being, however, for the larger part of its length, greater than
these figures. Its highest point above sea-level will be eighty-five
feet at the surface of the water and forty feet at the bottom, the
depth at this point being forty-five feet; _i.e._ it will be cut down
through the dividing ridge of the Continent to a point forty feet above
the two oceans.
The simplest way to realize its character is to consider it as
consisting of four sections which I will call (_a_) the Atlantic Level,
(_b_) the Lake, (_c_) the Cutting, and (_d_) the Pacific section (in
two levels separated by a lock). The Atlantic Level is a straight
channel, unbroken by locks, of eight miles, from deep water at the
mouth of the shallow Bay of Limon, a little west of Colon, to Gatun,
where it reaches the valley of the Chagres River. Now the Chagres River
had always been reckoned as one of the chief difficulties in the way
of making a canal. It occupied the bottom of that natural depression
along which all surveyors had long ago perceived that any canal must
run. But the difficulty of widening and deepening the river channel
till it should become a useable canal, was a formidable one, because
in the wet season the river swells to an unmanageable size under the
tropical rains, sometimes rising over forty feet in twenty-four hours.
This difficulty was at last met and the stream ingeniously utilized by
erecting right across the course of the Chagres a stupendous dam at
Gatun, which by impounding the water of the river turns its valley into
a lake. This lake will have along the central channel a depth of from
eighty-five to forty-five feet of water, sufficient for the largest
ship. At the Gatun dam there are three locks, built of concrete, with
a total rise of eighty-five feet, by which vessels will be lifted up
into the lake. The lake will fill not only the valley of the Chagres
itself, but the bottom of its tributary valleys to the east and west,
so that it will cover 164 square miles in all, and will be dotted by
many islands. The central and deepest line of this artificial piece of
water, nearly twenty-four miles long, is the second of our four canal
sections, and will be the prettiest, for the banks are richly wooded.
At the point called Bas Obispo, where the Chagres valley, which has
been running south-southeast towards the Pacific turns away to the
northeast among the hills, the line of the canal leaves the Gatun
river-lake, and we enter the third section, which I have called the
Cutting. Here hills are encountered, so it became necessary, in order
to avoid the making of more locks, to cut deep into the central line of
the continent, with its ridge of rock which connects the Cordilleras
of the southern continent with the Sierras of the northern. After five
miles of comparatively shallow cutting southward from the Lake, a tall
and steep eminence, Gold Hill, the continental watershed, its top 665
feet high, bars the way. Through it there has been carved out a mighty
gash, the "Culebra Cut," of which more anon. A little further south,
eight miles from the Lake, the ground begins to fall rapidly towards
the other sea, and we reach the fourth or Pacific section at a point
called Pedro Miguel. Here is a lock by which the Canal is lowered
thirty feet to another but much smaller artificial lake, formed by a
long dam built across the valley at a spot called Miraflores, where
we find two more locks, by which vessels will be lowered fifty-five
feet to the level of the Pacific. Thence the Canal runs straight out
into the ocean, here so shallow that a deep-water channel has been
dredged out for some miles, and a great dyke or mole erected along its
eastern side to keep the southerly current from silting up the harbour.
From Pedro Miguel to Miraflores it is nearly two miles, and from the
locks at the latter to the Pacific eight miles, so the length of this
fourth Pacific section, which, unlike the Atlantic section, is on two
different levels divided by the Miraflores dam and locks, is ten miles.
In it there has been comparatively little land excavation, because the
ground is flat, though a great deal of dredging, both to carry a sea
channel out through the shallow bay into the open Pacific, and also to
provide space for vessels to lie and load or discharge without blocking
the traffic.
Thus the voyager of the future, in the ten or twelve hours of his
passage from ocean to ocean, will have much variety. The level light
of the fiery tropic dawn will fall on the houses of Colon as he
approaches it in the morning, when vessels usually arrive. When his
ship has mounted the majestic staircase of the three Gatun locks from
the Atlantic level, he will glide slowly and softly along the waters of
a broad lake which gradually narrows toward its head, a lake enclosed
by rich forests of that velvety softness one sees in the tropics, with
vistas of forest-girt islets stretching far off to right and left among
the hills, a welcome change from the restless Caribbean Sea which he
has left. Then the mountains will close in upon him, steep slopes of
grass or brushwood rising two hundred feet above him as he passes
through the great Cut. From the level of the Miguel lock he will look
southward down the broad vale that opens on the ocean flooded with the
light of the declining sun, and see the rocky islets rising, between
which in the twilight his course will lie out into the vast Pacific.
At Suez the passage from sea to sea is through a dreary and monotonous
waste of shifting sand and barren clay. Here one is for a few hours
in the centre of a verdant continent, floating on smooth waters, shut
off from sight of the ocean behind and the ocean before, a short sweet
present of tranquillity between a stormy past and a stormy future.
In these forty miles of canal (or fifty if we reckon from deep water
to deep water) the two most remarkable pieces of engineering work are
the gigantic dam (with its locks) at Gatun and the gigantic cutting
at Culebra, each the hugest of its kind that the world has to shew.
The dam is nearly a mile and a half long; its base nearly half a mile
thick, and it is 400 feet wide at the water line of the lake which it
will support. Each of the three locks is double, so that one of the
pair can be used by vessels passing from north to south, the other by
those passing from south to north. Each has a useable length of 1000
feet, a useable width of 110 feet. They are big enough in length,
width, and depth for the largest vessels that were afloat in 1911.
He who stands inside one of them seems, when he looks up, to be at
the bottom of a rocky glen, "a canyon of cement." Nothing less than
an earthquake will affect them, and though earthquakes have been
destructive in Costa Rica, two hundred miles away, there is no record
of any serious one here. The locks will be worked, and vessels will be
towed through them, by electric power, which is to be generated by the
fall of the Chagres River over the spillway which carries its water
from the lake to the Atlantic.
The great Culebra Cut is interesting not only to the engineer, but also
to the geologist, as being what he calls a Section. It is the deepest
open cutting anywhere in the world, and shows curious phenomena in the
injection of igneous rocks, apparently very recent, among the loose
sedimentary beds, chiefly clays and soft sandstones of the latest
tertiary epoch. A troublesome result, partly of this intermixture, and
partly of the friability and instability not only of the sedimentary
strata but also of some of the volcanic rocks, has been noted in the
constant slips and slides of rock and earth down the sides of the
cutting into the bed of the canal that is to be. This source of expense
and delay was always foreseen by those who knew the character of the
soil and the power of torrential tropical rains, and was long dwelt
upon as a fatal objection to a sea-level canal. It has caused even
more delay and more expenditure than was expected. But it has now been
overcome, though to avert the risk of future damage to the work when
completed the engineers have been obliged to give a much lower slope to
the sides of the cutting than was originally contemplated, so that the
width of the cutting at the top is also greater than had been planned,
and the quantity of material excavated has been correspondingly
larger.[5] In order to lessen further washing down, the slopes will
be sown with creeping grasses and other plants calculated to hold the
surface soil.
The interior of the Culebra Cut presented, during the period of
excavation, a striking sight. Within the nine miles of the whole
cutting, two hundred miles of railroad track had been laid down side by
side, some on the lowest level on terraces along which the excavating
shovels were at work. Within the deepest part of the cutting, whose
length is less than a mile, many hundreds of railroad construction cars
and many thousands of men were at work, some busy in setting dynamite
charges for blasting, some clearing away the rubbish scattered round
by an explosion, some working the huge moving shovels which were
digging into the softer parts of the hill or were removing the material
loosened by explosions, the rest working the trains of cars that were
perpetually being made up and run out of the cutting at each end to
dump the excavated material wherever it was needed somewhere along the
line of the Canal. Every here and there one saw little puffs of steam,
some from the locomotives, some where the compressed air by which power
was applied to the shovels was escaping from the pipes, and condensing
the vapour-saturated atmosphere.
There is something in the magnitude and the methods of this enterprise
which a poet might take as his theme. Never before on our planet have
so much labour, so much scientific knowledge, and so much executive
skill been concentrated on a work designed to bring the nations nearer
to one another and serve the interests of all mankind.
Yet a still more interesting sight is that which meets the visitor
when, emerging from the cutting, he crosses to where, behind the
western hill, are the quarters of the workers,[6] with the cottages
of the chief engineer and his principal assistants on the top. The
chief engineer, Colonel Goethals, is the head not only of the whole
scheme of construction but of the whole administration, and his
energy, judgment, and power of swift decision are recognized to have
been a prime factor in the progress of the work and the excellence of
the administrative details. The houses, erected by the United States
government, are each of them surrounded on every floor by a fine wire
netting which, while freely admitting the air, excludes winged insects.
All the hospitals have been netted so carefully that no insect can
enter to carry out infection from a patient. Every path and every yard
is scrupulously clean and neat. Not a puddle of water is left where
mosquitoes can breed, for every slope and bottom has been carefully
drained. Even on the grass slopes that surround the villas at Ancon
there are little tile drains laid to carry off the rain. With the
well-kept lawns and the gay flower-beds, the place has the air of a
model village. And one sees the same in the other quarters of the
employés all along the canal line, at Gatun, at Miraflores, at Ancon,
where is the great hospital and where have been set up the offices
of the civil government which does everything for its employés, both
white and coloured. Nowhere perhaps in the world are workpeople so
well cared for, and such ample and almost luxurious provision made for
comfort and amusement as well as for health by the benevolent autocracy
which presides over everything. Its success in escaping all charges of
partiality or corruption, as well as in producing efficiency in the
work and contentment among the workers, has indeed been such as to
make some persons draw from it an argument in favour of State control
of all great enterprises. To the unbiassed observer it is rather an
instance of the efficiency obtainable by vesting full administrative
control in men whose uprightness and capacity have already been proved
beyond question, who have not risen by political methods, and who have
nothing to gain by any misuse of their powers. So far as any political
moral can be drawn from the case, that moral recommends not democratic
collectivism but military autocracy.
In these wire nettings and drainage arrangements and hospital
precautions, to which I have referred, more than in anything else is
to be found the reason why, after the French effort to build the canal
had twice failed, the present enterprise is succeeding. The French
engineers had shown great skill and were doing their work well. No
one admits their merits more fully than do, with the generous candour
that belongs to true soldiers and true men of science, the American
engineers who have come after them. But they had no means of fighting
the yellow fever and the malaria that were frustrating all their skill
and exhausting all their resources. The discovery, made while the
United States troops were occupying Cuba after the war of 1898, that
yellow fever is due to the bite of the _Stegomyia_ carrying infection
from a patient to a healthy person, and that intermittent fevers are
due to the bite of the _Anopheles_, similarly bearing poison from the
sick to the sound, made it possible to enter on a campaign for the
prevention of these diseases among the workers on the Isthmus. This
was done before excavation began, and done so efficiently that the
Isthmus is now as healthy as any part of the United States. No case
of yellow fever has occurred since 1905. The mortality is no higher
than in the United States army generally. In 1910 the death rate
among 50,802 employés of both colours in the Canal Zone was 10.98 per
thousand, in 1911, among 48,876, it was 11.02,--an extraordinarily low
rate when compared with the average of European and North American
cities. Among the American white employés and their families the rate
was only 6.01.[7] The white employés and their families are healthy
and fresh-looking, with none of that sickly brownish-yellow hue which
usually marks the inhabitants of malarial districts. And I can confirm
what many other visitors have told me, that one may be for days and
nights on the Isthmus and neither see nor hear nor feel a mosquito.
To have made one of the pest-houses of the world, a place with a
reputation like that of the Pontine Marshes, or Poti on the Black
Sea, or Sierra Leone itself, as healthy as Boston or London is an
achievement of which the American medical staff, and their country for
them, may well be proud; and the name of Colonel Gorgas, the head of
that medical staff to whose unwearied zeal and care this achievement
is largely due, deserves to stand on the roll of fame beside that of
Colonel Goethals, the chief engineer and Chairman of the Commission,
who has directed, and is bringing to its successful issue, this whole
great enterprise.
The sanitation of the Canal Zone, following that of Havana, has
done more than make possible the piercing of the Isthmus. It has
opened up possibilities for the settlement by Europeans of, and for
the maintenance of permanent European population in, many tropical
districts hitherto deemed habitable by their natives only. To the
effect of such an example one can hardly set bounds.
In no previous age could an enterprise so vast as this have been
carried through; that is to say, it would have required a time so long
and an expenditure so prodigious that no rational government would
have attempted it. Pharaoh Necho may have, as Herodotus relates, dug a
canal across the Isthmus of Suez by the labour of hundreds of thousands
of his subjects accustomed to implicit obedience, but his ditch was
probably a small and shallow one, and it was through a dead level of
sand and clay that it was dug. Here there was a mountain to pierce
and a torrent to bridle, and the locks had to provide for vessels
a thousand feet long. Nothing but the new forces which scientific
discovery has placed in the hands of the modern engineer--steam,
electricity, explosives of high power, machinery capable of raising and
setting in their place one above another huge masses of cement--would
have made the work possible. Yet even that was not enough. The French
company possessed such appliances, and though their estimates of cost
turned out to be based on totally inadequate data, the competence and
energy of their engineers have never been questioned. And the French
company failed hopelessly; and failed not merely because the work
turned out heavier, and the loose strata giving way under the downpours
of rain made the slides and landslips far worse, than was expected.[8]
These things doubtless told against them, and much of the money raised
never found its way to the Isthmus. But it was a more terrible force
that foiled them. It was Pestilence, Pestilence coming on the gauzy
wings of the mosquito. So little did they recognize their foe that when
they built the large and commodious hospital at Ancon they provided,
outside the windows, flower-boxes where stagnant water gathered and
mosquitoes were hatched. Engineers died, foremen died, labourers
were mown down by hundreds. Yet even if all the French capital had
been properly spent and better sanitary measures had reduced the
pestilential conditions, it may be doubted whether the French company
could have made a success of the undertaking. More capital would have
been needed, capital which must have been raised on onerous terms,
and when it had all been spent and the work completed the profits
of the canal could not, after providing for working expenses, have
paid interest on half of the money borrowed. Whoever looks at this
prodigious work feels that it could be carried through only by a nation
commanding resources so overflowing that it does not need to care how
much it spends, a nation which can borrow as much money as it pleases
without sensibly affecting the quotations of its existing national debt.
It is expected that the construction of the Canal will be found, when
it is finished, to have cost nearly £80,000,000 ($400,000,000).[9] To
this there will have to be added the cost of the fortifications it is
intended to erect at Colon and on the islands that lie in the Gulf of
Panama, opposite the south end of the Canal, as well as of barracks
for the large garrison which is to defend it. The visitor who sees
the slopes where these forts and batteries are to be placed asks who
are the enemies whom it is desired to repel. Where is the great naval
power that has any motive either of national enmity or of self-interest
sufficient to induce it to face the risks of a war with a country so
populous, so wealthy, and so vigorous as the United States? He is told
that there is at present no such naval power, and that no quarter can
be indicated whence danger will arise; but that it is possible that at
some future time, from some unknown direction, some yet unconjectured
enemy may arise against whose possible attacks provision ought now to
be made.
When the Canal has been opened and the interest now felt in getting
it completed by the appointed day has ended, hardly less keen will
be the interest in that other question on which men have speculated
so long. What difference will this new waterway from ocean to ocean
make to world commerce and therewith also, though probably in a less
degree, to world politics? And what difference, to descend to smaller
matters, will it make to the West Indies, and to the ports of the
Gulf of Mexico, and (not so much commercially as politically) to the
neighbouring states of Central and South America? The political side
of the matter is one too delicate to be discussed here, but upon the
commercial one a word or two may be said.
The new route will doubtless become an important route for the traffic
in heavy freight from the Atlantic ports of the United States, and from
European ports also, to the ports of western North America.
It will similarly become the main freight line for goods of all kinds
from both European and eastern North American ports to the west coast
of South America as far south as Callao, and also from Gulf of Mexico
ports as far as Coquimbo or Valparaiso. Whether the freight traffic
from Europe to Valparaiso and the other ports of Chile will be greatly
affected, is deemed more doubtful. Much will, of course, depend on the
tolls fixed for transit through the Canal, which, by the treaty of 1901
between Great Britain and the United States, are to be, like those at
Suez, equal between all nations.
The most interesting, because the largest, and also the most doubtful
and complicated, question is as to the result upon European commerce to
the Far East,--Japan, China, New Zealand, and Australia. It is the most
complicated, because many factors enter into it, some of them political
as well as commercial. Here the Canal will compete with the Suez Canal
route, and (as respects Australia in particular) with the Cape of Good
Hope route, and it will also compete with the steamship lines which now
ply from Australia and New Zealand to England round Cape Horn. From
England to all the Australasian and east Asiatic ports, except those of
New Zealand, the Suez route will be shorter than that by Panama.[10]
From New York, however, the route by Panama to Sydney, Auckland (New
Zealand), and Shanghai will be shorter than that via Suez, while to
Hong Kong and Manila it will be of practically the same length. It is
generally supposed that the Panama tolls will be lower than those now
imposed at Suez. Commerce, like other things, changes more quickly in
our age than it did in any previous age; yet years may elapse before
the full results of the opening of the Canal disclose themselves. Some
of the commercial as well as the political consequences which have been
due to the making of the Suez Canal were altogether unforeseen. If a
dozen of the most important experts were, in 1914, to write out and
place in the library of the British Museum and the library of Congress
their respective forecasts bearing on this subject, sealed up and not
to be opened till A.D. 2000, they might make curious reading in that
latter year.
The chief impressions which the scenery of the Isthmus makes on the
traveller have already been indicated,--the contrast of the wildness
and solitude of the region with its wonderful geographical position,
which long ago seemed destined to make it a centre of commerce and
population, the contrast of the advantages offered by that position
with the slothful neglect of those advantages by its Spanish rulers,
the contrast one sees to-day between the busy crowd of workers along
this narrow line cut out from the vast forest and the untouched
unpeopled nature on each side, the contrast between the black cloud of
death that hung over it for four centuries and the sunshine of health
and energy which medical science has now poured around it.
But the strongest impression of all is that here one sees the latest,
so far as can be foreseen, of any large changes which man is likely
to try to work upon the surface of the earth. Tunnels longer than
any yet made may be bored through mountains or carried under arms of
the sea. The courses of rivers may be diverted. Reservoirs vaster
than any we know may be constructed to irrigate arid tracts or supply
electric power to cities, and bridges may be built to span straits like
the Bosphorus, or railroads, like that recently opened in southern
Florida, be carried through the sea along a line of reefs. But nowhere
else do there remain two continents to be divided, two oceans to be
connected, by a water channel cut through a mountain range.
There is a tale that when the plan for digging a canal at Panama was
first mooted, Philip the Second of Spain was deterred from it by the
argument, pressed by his clerical advisers, that if the Almighty had
wished the seas to be joined, He would have joined them, just as,
according to Herodotus, the people of Knidus were deterred by the
Delphic oracle from cutting through the isthmus along which their
Persian enemies could advance by land to attack them. If Zeus had
wished the place to be an island, said the oracle, he would have made
it one. But when an age arrived in which commercial and scientific
views of nature prevailed against ecclesiastics, it became certain that
here a canal would be some time or other made. Made it now has been. It
is the greatest liberty Man has ever taken with Nature.