THE CULEBRA CUT.
Technically what is known as the Culebra Cut extends from Bas Obispo to
the locks at Pedro Miguel, a distance of nine miles. To the general
public understanding, however, the term applies only to the point of
greatest excavation between Gold Hill and Contractor’s Hill. But at Bas
Obispo the walls of the Canal for the first time rise above the water
level of Gatun Lake. At that point the cutting begins, the walls rising
higher and higher, the Canal pressing stubbornly onward at a dead level,
until the supreme height of the continental divide is attained at Gold
Hill. Thenceforward on the line toward Panama City the hills grow lower
until at the entrance to the locks at Pedro Miguel the banks sink
practically to the water level. Out of this nine mile stretch there had
been taken up to January 1, 1913, just 88,531,237 cubic yards of
material and it was then estimated that there then remained to be
excavated 5,351,419 cubic yards more. But the later estimate was
destined to be largely increased for, after the date at which it was
made, the number and extent of “slides” in the deepest part of the cut
increased to staggering proportions. Col. D. D. Gaillard, Member of the
Commission and Division Engineer in charge of the Culebra Cut, estimated
in 1912 that in all 115,000,000 cubic yards would have to be removed.
To the general public the slides seemed to menace the very existence and
practicability of the Canal, though the engineers knew that they began
even with the superficial excavating done by the French, and had
therefore made allowance for them in their estimates. Not sufficient
allowance however was made, and as month after month brought tidings of
new slides, with terrifying details of such incidents as whole forests
moving, vast cracks opening in the earth, large buildings in imminent
danger of being swept into the Cut, the bottom of the Canal mysteriously
rising ten to fifteen feet in the air, while smoke oozed from the pores
of the adjacent earth--when such direful reports filled the newspapers
the public became nervous, almost abandoning hope of the success of the
great enterprise.
[Illustration: WORKING ON THREE LEVELS]
This attitude of apprehension on the part of the public is scarcely
surprising. If the Capitol Park at Washington, with the National Capitol
cresting it, should suddenly begin to move down into Pennsylvania Avenue
at the rate of about three feet a day the authorities of the city would
naturally feel some degree of annoyance. And if the smooth and level
asphalt of that historic thoroughfare should, over night, rise up into
the air 18 feet in spots those responsible for traffic might not
unreasonably be somewhat worried.
Such a phenomenon would not be so startling in mere magnitude as the
slides which added so greatly to the work of the engineers on the Canal,
and made tourists, wise with the ripe fruits of five days’ observation,
wag their heads knowingly when Col. Goethals calmly repeated his
assertion that the water would be turned in by August. The Colonel,
however, had not withdrawn or even modified this prophecy so late as
June 10, 1913. Despite the almost daily news of increased activity of
the slides he clung with tenacity to his purpose of putting a ship
through in October.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of Scientific American_
THE ORIGINAL CULEBRA SLIDE
A Y. M. C. A. club had to be moved to escape this slide which in 1913
was still moving]
If these slides were an entirely new and unexpected development for
which no allowance of either time or money had been made in the
estimates of the Canal builders they would of course justify the
apprehension they have awakened in the non-professional mind. But the
slides were in fact anticipated. The first slide recorded during our
work on the Isthmus was in 1905; the others have only been bigger, and
have been bigger only because the Canal being dug deeper has weakened
the bases of even bigger hills along the banks. All the same, the
proportions of the slides are terrifying and the chief geologist
declared that they would not cease until the angle of the Canal bank
became so gentle that gravity would not pull the crest down.
The slides are of two sorts. The simpler is a mere swift rush of all the
loose surface dirt, sand, gravel and stone down the surface of the bank.
These gravity slides, mere dirt avalanches, though troublesome, present
no new problems. To stop them it is necessary only to carry the crest of
the bank further back so that the angle will be less steep. But the
great, troublesome slides are those caused by the pressure of the
hill-top on its undermined and weakened base. These originate at the top
of the hill, making their presence known by gaping fissures opening in
the earth and extending in lines roughly parallel to the Canal. Once
started the whole mass, acres in extent, moves slowly toward the cavity
of the Canal, three feet a day being its swiftest recorded progress. At
Culebra the slides compelled the moving of a large part of the town away
from the edge of the Cut, lest it be swept into the gorge. The Culebra
Y. M. C. A. clubhouse, the largest on the Zone had to be torn down to
escape this peril.
As the slide moves slowly downward, its colossal weight applied at
points where nature had made no provision for it, forces the earth
upward at the point where it can offer the least resistance, namely the
bed of the Canal. Sometimes this upheaval, so mysterious to the
non-technical mind, attains a height of eighteen feet. Again, the
friction of this huge mass of stone and gravel creates heat, which turns
into steam the rills of water that everywhere percolates through the
soil. The upheaval of the Canal bed, and the occasional outpourings of
steam have led at times to exaggerated and wholly unfounded reports in
the newspapers of volcanic action being one of the new problems with
which the Canal builders had to grapple.
The story told about the extent of the slides is sufficiently alarming,
but the calmness with which Col. Goethals and his lieutenants meet the
situation is reassuring. According to the official report there were
twenty-six slides and breaks in Culebra Cut to January 1, 1913 with a
total area of 225 acres. Since that date many others have occurred. It
is estimated that because of slides between 21,000,000 and 22,000,000
cubic yards of material in excess of the original estimate will have
been taken out of the Cut before completion. This is just about
one-fifth of the total amount of excavation, dry and wet, estimated
originally for the whole Canal. But the attitude of the engineers toward
this addition to their labors was merely one of calm acceptance of the
inevitable and a dogged determination to get the stuff out of the way.
The slides were an obstacle; so was the whole isthmus for that matter.
But all that was necessary was to keep the shovels working and the
slides would be removed and the isthmus pierced.
To my mind one of the finest evidences of the spirit animating the Canal
force was the fashion in which this problem of the slides has been
approached. It was at first disappointing, almost demoralizing, to find
over night the work of weeks undone and the day when “finis” could be
written to the volume put far over into the future. But the only effect
was a tighter grip on the pick and the shovel, a new determination to
force through the Canal. Culebra was approached as Grant approached
Vicksburg. To reduce it and to open the Canal to traffic, as Grant
opened the Mississippi to the steamboats of the nation, took more time
than was at first expected, but it had to be done. The dirt could not
always slide in faster than it could be carted out, for in time there
would be no dirt left to slide. And so, undismayed and intent upon
success, the whole force from Col. Goethals to the youngest engineer
moved on Culebra and the doom of that stubborn block to progress was
sealed.
[Illustration: SLIDE ON WEST BANK OF THE CANAL NEAR CULEBRA
Picture shows about 1,000,000 cubic yards of material moving toward the
cut at about three yards a day]
To the unscientific mind the slides are terrifying in their magnitude
and in the evidence they give of irresistible force. Man can no more
check their advance than he can that of a glacier which in a way they
resemble. When I was on the Isthmus the great Cucaracha slide was in
progress, and had been for that matter since 1907. It had a total area
of 47 acres and extended up the east bank of the Canal for about 1900
feet from the axis of the Canal. When it began its progress was
disconcertingly rapid. Its base, foot, or “toe”--these anatomical terms
in engineering are sometimes perplexing--moved across the canal bed at
the rate of 14 feet a day. All that stood in its path was buried, torn
to pieces or carried along with the resistless glacier of mud. Not
content with filling the Canal from one side to the other, the dirt rose
on the further side to a height of about 30 feet. Not only was the work
of months obliterated, but work was laid out for years to come. Indeed
in 1913 they were still digging at the Cucaracha slide and the end was
not in sight. This slide was wholly a gravity slide, caused by a mass of
earth slipping on the inclined surface of some smooth and slippery
material like clay on which it rests. The nature of the phenomenon is
clearly shown by the diagram printed on the next page in which the slide
marked C is of the type just described.
[Illustration: ATTACKING THE CUCARACHA SLIDE
This slide has filled the Cut from side to side. A partial Cut has been
dug through its center and the shovels are seen working on either side.
The tracks are moved nightly as the material is removed.]
On the west bank of the Canal occurred a slide of the second type caused
by the crushing and squeezing out of underlying layers of soft material
by the prodigious pressure of the high banks left untouched by the steam
shovels. This slide is usually accompanied by the uprising of the bed of
the Canal sometimes to a height of thirty feet. Col. Gaillard tells of
standing on the bed of the Canal, observing the working of a steam
shovel, when it gradually dawned upon him that he was no longer on the
level of the shovel. At first he thought that the shovel must have been
placed upon a bit of boggy land and was slowly sinking, but on
investigation he discovered that the point on which he was standing had
been slowly rising until within five minutes he had been lifted six feet
without jar and with no sensation of motion. A perfectly simple
illustration of the way in which this elevation of the bed of the Canal
is caused may be obtained by pressing the hand upon a pan of dough. The
dough will of course rise at the side of the hand. On the “big job” the
towering hills furnished the pressure, the bed of the Canal rose like
the dough. In the diagram already referred to, the slide to the right
marked “B” is of the type here described. To cope with it, the work of
the shovels and dirt trains in the Canal carrying the débris away is
supplemented by others above removing the crest of the slide and thus
lightening the pressure. In the diagram shovels are shown thus working
on two levels, but I have seen four terraces of the same slide bearing
steam shovels and rumbling dirt trains hurrying the débris away to where
it will no longer be a menace.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM OF CULEBRA CUT SLIDES
C. is a slide moving over a slippery surface; the mass B breaks on a
line of cleavage and crushes the underlying material, forcing it up at
A. The steam shovels are working to reduce pressure on B]
[Illustration: _Courtesy of Scientific American_
A ROCK SLIDE NEAR EMPIRE
About 400,000 cubic yards of rock broke away, half filling the cut and
opening it to the water of the Obispo Diversion Canal]
The Culebra slide possessed a certain remorselessness which was not
manifested by any of the others in quite so picturesque a way. For this
slide, with apparently human malice, attacked not only the work done on
the Canal proper, but like a well directed army moved on the
headquarters of its foe. Its first manifestation appeared in the form of
a wide crack in the earth at the crest of the hill on which sits the
town of Culebra, and directly in front of the building used by Col.
Gaillard as division headquarters for the engineers. Retreat was the
only course possible in the face of such an enemy and the building was
sacrificed. The Culebra Y. M. C. A. clubhouse too was a point of attack
for the remorseless foe. It stood on the very crest of the hill, a
beautiful building on a most beautiful site. The serpent of Culebra
Cut--the word “culebra” means snake--saw this pleasant place of rest and
marked it for his own. Nothing remained but to rally a force of men and
tear the building down for reërection at some other point. It was
probably the largest and most attractive clubhouse on the Zone, but
where it once stood there was a nearly sheer drop of about sixty feet,
when first I visited the scene of the slide. Before the spot, too, on
which the engineering headquarters had stood, there was a patch of lawn
that had slid some eighty feet down into the Cut. With it traveled along
a young eucalyptus tree waving its leaves defiantly in the face of the
enemy that was bearing it to irrevocable disaster. Whether the Culebra
slide had attained its fullest proportions in 1913 could not be told
with certainty though the belief was current that it had. While the
crest of the hill had not been fully reached, the top of the slide began
at the edge of a sort of jog or terrace that extended away from the Cut
some distance on a level before the ground began to slope upward again.
Should it extend further a very considerable and beautiful part of the
town would be destroyed, but as it is to be abandoned in any event on
the completion of the Canal, this phase of the matter does not give the
Commission much concern.
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR AT CULEBRA CUT]
[Illustration: CUTTING AT BASE OF CONTRACTORS HILL
This shows the point at which the Cut is deepest. The actual level of
canal bed was not reached at the time this photograph was taken]
A third slide, of lesser proportions which seriously complicated the
work of the engineers, occurred near Empire in August, 1912. Here about
400,000 cubic yards of rock slipped into the Cut, wrecking cars,
destroying tracks and machinery and flooding the Canal with water from
the Obispo diversion. It is not generally known that parallel to the
Canal at various points are dug smaller canals, or big ditches, for the
purpose of catching and carrying off the heavy annual rainfall on the
canal watershed. These diversion ditches cost much in time and labor.
One was constructed by the French. Another, 5¹⁄₄ miles long, known as
the Obispo diversion, cost $1,250,000 and was absolutely essential to
the construction of the Canal. The rock slide, above referred to, broke
down the barrier between the Canal cut and the diversion ditch and
filled the former with an untimely flood which it took time to stay and
pump out.
[Illustration: A ROCK SLIDE AT LAS CASCADES
A steam shovel was wholly demolished but its operators escaped. The
slides have seldom cost lives]
From all parts of the United States citizens interested in the progress
of the Canal--and only those at the work can tell how widespread and
patriotic that interest is--have sent suggestions for checking these
slides. Practically all have been impracticable--a few only indeed have
been thought worthy of being put to the test. One that for a time seemed
worth trying was the suggestion that the wall of the cut be plastered
with concrete, binding its surface together in a solid mass. But upon
that being done it was demonstrated that the slides were not superficial
but basic, and concrete face and all went down to one general
destruction when the movement began. One curious fact about the slides
is that they do not invariably slide _down_ throughout their entire
course. Occasionally they take a turn upward. One tree at Cucaracha was
pointed out to me which after moving majestically down for a space was
carried upward over a slope for 100 feet, and then having passed the
crest of the hill started down again.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
SLICING OFF THE CHIEF ENGINEER’S OFFICE]
The slides are by no means wholly in the wet season despite the popular
impression to that effect, though it was in the height of that season
that the one at Cucaracha began. Yet I have seen a slide moving slowly
in January when the shovels digging fiercely at its base were enshrouded
in clouds of dust. Curiously enough though tracks have been torn up,
machinery engulfed and wrung into indistinguishable tangles of steel, no
man was caught in any of these avalanches prior to May, 1913, when three
were thus lost. The tax they have put upon time and labor however has
been heavy enough. Within the 8⁴⁄₅ miles of the Culebra Cut fully 200
miles of track have been covered up, destroyed or necessarily rebuilt
because of slides, and at one point tracks had to be maintained for
nearly two years on ground moving from three or four inches to several
feet a day. Of course this necessitated the constant work of repair
gangs and track layers. When the Canal is completed nearly 22% of the
excavation will have been of material put in the way by slides--a fact
which seems to give some belated support to the prophecy of the early
Spanish theologians that God would not permit the Isthmus to be pierced,
but would array new and unexpected forces against so blasphemous an
effort to interfere with His perfect work.
One feature of the slides which would surely have awed the pious
prophets of the Spanish day, and which did indeed considerably perplex
our more prosaic engineers, was the little wisps of smoke that arose
from the slowly moving soil. That this was volcanic few believed, except
some newspaper correspondents in eager search for sensations. The true
explanation that heat generated by friction working upon the water in
the earth caused the steam was all very well and complete as an
explanation of that particular phenomenon. But it left a certain
worried feeling in the minds of the men who spent their days in putting
hundreds of plugs of dynamite into holes drilled in the rock which the
scientists declared superheated. Dropping a dynamite cartridge into a
red-hot rock is apt to create a menace to the continued life and health
of the dropper which even the excellent sanitary brigade of Col. Gorgas
could scarcely control successfully. For a time there was a halt in the
blasting operations and indeed two blasts were fired prematurely by this
natural heat, but fortunately without loss of life. Finally the scheme
was devised of thrusting an iron pipe into the drill hole and leaving it
there a few minutes. If it was cool to the touch on withdrawal all was
well; if hot a stream of water was kept playing in the hole while the
charge was inserted and tamped down.
Dynamite has been man’s most useful slave in this great work, but like
all slaves it now and then rises in fierce and murderous revolt. “Though
during the past three and one-quarter years, in work under the writer’s
charge”, writes Col. Gaillard, “over 20,000,000 pounds of dynamite were
used in blasting, but eight men have been killed, three of whom failed
to go to a safe distance and were killed by flying stones, and two by
miscounting the number of shots which had gone off in a ‘dobe’ group,
and approaching the group before the last shot had exploded”.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
HOW TOURISTS SEE THE CUT
The picture shows Vincent Astor’s party in the observation car]
Something like 12,000,000 pounds of dynamite a year was imported from
“the states” to keep the job going, over 6,000,000 pounds a year being
used in Culebra Cut alone, and many an unsuspecting passenger danced
over the tossing Atlantic waves with a cargo beneath him explosive
enough to blow him to the moon. On the Zone the stuff is handled with
all the care that long familiarity has shown to be necessary, but to the
uninitiated it looks careless enough. It is however a fact that the
accidents are continually lessening in number and in fatalities caused.
The greatest accident of all occurred December 12, 1908, when we had
been only four years on the job. It was at Bas Obispo, and in order to
throw over the face of a hill of rock that rose from the west bank of
the Canal at that point nearly 44,000 pounds of dynamite had been neatly
tamped away in the holes drilled for that purpose. Actually the last
hole of this prodigious battery was being tamped when it exploded and
set off all the others. A colossal concussion shook all the face of the
earth. The side of the hill vanished in a cloud of smoke and dust from
which flying rocks and trees rose into the air. When the roar of the
explosion died away cries of anguish rose on the trembling air. About
the scene of the explosion an army of men had been working, and of these
26 had been killed outright and a host more wounded. No such disaster
has ever occurred again though there have been several small ones, and
many narrow escapes from large ones.
Once a steam shovel taking its accustomed bite of four or five cubic
yards of dirt, engulfed at the same time about a bushel of dynamite left
from the French days. Again the teeth of a shovel bit upon the fulminate
cap of a forgotten charge. In both these cases the miraculous happened
and no explosion occurred. When one reads in the Official Handbook
issued by the Commission that a pound of dynamite has been used to about
every two cubic yards of material blasted, and compares it with the
total excavation of about 200,000,000 cubic yards one thinks that even
the undoubted sins of the Isthmus during its riotous days are expiated
by such a vigorous blowing up.
[Illustration: JAMAICANS OPERATING A COMPRESSED AIR DRILL]
One day at Matachin an engineer with whom I was talking called a
Spaniard and sent him off on an errand. I noticed the man walked queerly
and commented on it. “It’s a wonder that fellow walks at all”, said my
friend with a laugh. “He was sitting on a ledge once when a blast below
went off prematurely and Miguel, with three or four other men, and a few
tons of rock, dirt and other débris went up into the air. He was
literally blown at least 80 feet high. The other men were killed, but we
found signs of life in him and shipped him to the hospital where he
stayed nearly eight months. I’d hesitate to tell you how many bones were
broken, but I think the spine was the only one not fractured and that
was dislocated. His job is safe for the rest of his life. He loves to
tell about it. Wait ’till he gets back and I’ll ask him”.
[Illustration: HANDLING ROCK IN ANCON QUARRY]
Presently Miguel returned, sideways like a crab, but with agility all
the same. “Tell the gentleman how it feels to be blown up”, said the
engineer.
“Caramba! I seet on ze aidge of ze cut, smoke my pipe, watch ze work
when--Boom! I fly up in air, up, up! I stop. It seem I stop long time. I
see ozzair sings fly up past me. I start down--I breathe smoke, sand.
Bang! I hit ground. When I wake I in bed at hospital. Can’t move. Same
as dead”!
“Miguel never fails to lay stress on the time he stopped before
beginning his descent”, comments my friend, “and on the calmness with
which he viewed the prospect, particularly the other things going up.
His chief sorrow is that no moving picture man took the incident”.
Incidents of heroic self-sacrifice are not unknown among the dynamite
handlers. Here is the story of Angel Alvarez, an humble worker on the
Big Job. He was getting ready a surface blast of dynamite and all around
him men were working in calm assurance that he would notify them before
the explosion. Happening to glance up he saw a great boulder just
starting to slip down the cut into the pit where he stood with two open
boxes of dynamite. He knew that disaster impended. He could have jumped
from the pit and run, saving himself but sacrificing his comrades.
Instead he shouted a frantic warning, and seizing the two boxes of
dynamite thrust them aside out of the way of the falling boulder. There
was no hope for him. The rock would have crushed him in any event. But
one stick of dynamite fell from one of the boxes and was
exploded--though the colossal explosion that might have occurred was
averted. They thought that Alvarez was broken to bits when they gathered
him up, but the surgeons patched him up, and made a kind of a man out of
him. Not very shapely or vigorous is Angel Alvarez now but in a sense he
carries the lives of twenty men he saved in that moment of swift
decision.
The visitor to the Cut during the period of construction found two types
of drills, the tripod and the well, busily preparing the chambers for
the reception of the dynamite. Of the former there were 221 in use, of
the latter 156. With this battery over 90 miles of holes have been
excavated in a month, each hole being about 27 feet deep. The drills are
operated by compressed air supplied from a main running the length of
the Cut and are in batteries of three to eight manned by Jamaica negroes
who look as if the business of standing by and watching the drill
automatically eat its way into the rock heartily agreed with their
conception of the right sort of work.
[Illustration: IN THE CUCARACHA SLIDE]
He who did not see the Culebra Cut during the mighty work of excavation
missed one of the great spectacles of the ages--a sight that at no other
time, or place was, or will be, given to man to see. How it was best
seen many visits left me unable to determine. From its crest on a
working day you looked down upon a mighty rift in the earth’s crust, at
the base of which pigmy engines and ant-like forms were rushing to and
fro without seeming plan or reason. Through the murky atmosphere strange
sounds rose up and smote the ear of the onlooker with resounding clamor.
He heard the strident clink, clink of the drills eating their way into
the rock; the shrill whistles of the locomotives giving warning of some
small blast, for the great charges were set off out of working hours
when the Cut was empty; the constant and uninterrupted rumble that told
of the dirt trains ever plying over the crowded tracks; the heavy crash
that accompanied the dumping of a six-ton boulder onto a flat car; the
clanking of chains and the creaking of machinery as the arms of the
steam shovels swung around looking for another load; the cries of men,
and the booming of blasts. Collectively the sounds were harsh,
deafening, brutal such as we might fancy would arise from hell were the
lid of that place of fire and torment to be lifted.
But individually each sound betokened useful work and service in the
cause of man and progress as truly as could the musical tinkle of cow
bells, the murmur of water over a village millwheel, or the rude melody
of the sailors’ songs as they trim the yards for the voyage to the
distant isles of spice. The hum of industry that the poets have loved to
tell about loses nothing of its significance when from a hum it rises to
a roar. Only not all the poets can catch the meaning of its new note.
[Illustration: BROW OF GOLD HILL, CULEBRA CUT]
So much for the sounds of the Culebra Cut on a work day. The sights are
yet more wonderful. One who has looked upon the Grand Canyon of the
Colorado will find in this man-made gash in the hills something of the
riot of color that characterizes that greatest of natural wonders, but
he who has had no such preparation will stand amazed before the barbaric
wealth of hues which blaze forth from these precipitous walls. Reds
predominate--red of as deep a crimson as though Mother Earth’s bosom
thus cruelly slashed and scarred was giving up its very life’s blood;
red shading into orange, tropical, hot, riotous, pulsing like the life
of the old Isthmus that is being carved away to make place for the new;
red, pale, pinkish, shading down almost to rose color as delicate as the
hue on a maiden’s cheek, typifying perhaps the first blush of the bride
in the wedding of the Atlantic to the Pacific. Yellow too from the
brightest orange to the palest ochre, and blue from the shade of indigo
which Columbus hoped to bring across this very Isthmus from the bazaars
of Cathay; purple as royal as Ferdinand and Isabella ever wore, or the
paler shades of the tropic sky are there. As you look upon the dazzling
array strung out before you for miles you may reflect that imbedded in
those parti-colored rocks and clays are semi-precious stones of varied
shades and sorts--beryls, moss agates, bloodstones, moonstones which the
workmen pick up and sell to rude lapidaries who cut and sell them to
tourists. But in all this colossal tearing up of the earth’s surface
there has been found none of the gold for which the first white men
lusted, nor any precious stone or useful mineral whatsoever.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
A DIRT-SPREADER AT WORK]
[Illustration: “EVERY BITE RECORDED AT HEADQUARTERS”]
Again I looked on the Cut from above one morning before the breeze that
blows across the Isthmus from nine o’clock in the morning until sundown,
had driven out of it the mists of early dawn. From unseen depths filled
with billowy vapor rose the clatter of strenuous toil by men and
machines, softened somewhat by the fleecy material through which they
penetrated. Of the workers no sign appeared until the growing heat of
the sun and the freshening breeze began to sweep the Cut clear in its
higher reaches, and there on the topmost terrace of Gold Hill, half a
mile across the abyss from where I stood, was revealed a monster steam
shovel digging away at the crest of the hill to lighten the weight that
was crowding acres upon acres of broken soil into the canal below. It
seemed like a mechanical device on some gigantic stage, as with
noiseless ferocity it burrowed into the hillside, then shaking and
trembling with the effort swung back its long arm and disgorged its huge
mouthful on the waiting flat cars. The curtain of mist was slowly
disappearing. From my lofty eyrie on an outjutting point of Contractor’s
Hill it seemed as if the stage was being displayed, not by the lifting
of a curtain, but rather by the withdrawal of a shield downward so that
the higher scenery became first visible. One by one the terraces cut
into the lofty hillsides were exposed to view, each with its line of
tugging steam shovels and its rows of motionless empty cars, or rolling
filled ones rumbling away to the distant dump. Now and again a sudden
eruption of stones and dirt above the shield of fog followed in a few
seconds by a dull boom told of some blast. So dense was the mist that
one marvelled how in that narrow lane below, filled with railroad
tracks, and with busy trains rushing back and forth men could work save
at imminent danger of disaster. Death lurked there at all times and the
gray covering of fog was more than once in the truest sense a pall for
some poor mutilated human frame.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
A LIDGERWOOD UNLOADER AT WORK]
Perhaps the most impressive view of the Cut in the days of its activity
was that from above. It was the one which gave the broadest general
sense of the prodigious proportions of the work. But a more terrifying
one, as well as a more precise comprehension of the infinity of detail
coupled with the magnitude of scope of the work was to be obtained by
plodding on foot through the five miles where the battle of Culebra was
being most fiercely fought. The powers that be--or that were--did not
encourage this method of observation. They preferred to send visitors
through this Death’s Lane, this confusing network of busy tracks, in an
observation car built for the purpose, or in one of the trim little
motor cars built to run on the railroad tracks for the use of officials.
From the fact that one of the latter bore the somewhat significant
nickname “The Yellow Peril” and from stories of accidents which had
occurred to occupants of these little scouts among the mighty engines of
war, I am inclined to think that the journey on foot, if more wearisome,
was not more perilous.
[Illustration: THE TRACK SHIFTER IN ACTION]
Put on then a suit of khaki with stout shoes and take the train for
Culebra. That will be as good a spot as any to descend into the Cut, and
we will find there some airy rows of perpendicular ladders connecting
the various levels up and down which an agile monkey, or Col. Gaillard
or any of his assistants, can run with ease, but which we descend with
infinite caution and some measure of nervous apprehension. Probably the
first sound that will greet your ears above the general clatter, when
you have attained the floor of the Canal will be a stentorian cry of
“Look out, there! Look out”! You will hear that warning hail many a time
and oft in the forenoon’s walk we are about to take. I don’t know of any
spot where Edward Everett Hale’s motto, “Look Out and Not In; Look Up
and Not Down; Look Forward and Not Back” needs editing more than at
Culebra. The wise man looked all those ways and then some. For trains
are bearing down upon you from all directions and so close are the
tracks and so numerous the switches that it is impossible to tell the
zone of safety except by observing the trains themselves. If your gaze
is too intently fixed on one point a warning cry may call your attention
to the arm of a steam shovel above your head with a five-ton boulder
insecurely balanced, or a big, black Jamaican a few yards ahead
perfunctorily waving a red flag in token that a “dobe” blast is to be
fired. A “dobe” blast is regarded with contempt by the fellows who
explode a few tons of dynamite at a time and demolish a whole hillside,
but the “dobes” throw fifty to one hundred pound stones about in a
reckless way that compels unprofessional respect. They tell a story on
the Zone of a negro who, not thinking himself in range, was sitting on a
box of dynamite calmly smoking a cigarette. A heavy stone dropped
squarely on his head killing him instantly, but was sufficiently
deflected by the hardness of the Ethiopian skull to miss the box on
which the victim sat. Had it been otherwise the neighboring landscape
and its population would have been materially changed.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE COLONEL’S TROUBLES
This shovel was overwhelmed by a slide. The accident is not uncommon]
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE SLICED-OFF HILL AT ANCON]
It is no wonder that we have trains to dodge during the course of our
stroll. There are at the moment of our visit 115 locomotives and 2000
cars in service in the Cut. About 160 loaded trains go out daily, and,
of course about 160 return empty. Three hundred and twenty trains in the
eight-hour day, with two hours’ intermission at noon, means almost one
train a minute speeding through a right of way 300 feet wide and much
cluttered up with shovels, drills and other machinery. In March, 1911,
the record month, these trains handled 1,728,748 cubic yards of
material, carrying all to the dumps which average 12 miles distant, the
farthest one being 33 miles. The lay mind does not at first think of
it, but it is a fact that it was no easy task to select spots for all
this refuse in a territory only 436 square miles in area, of which 164
square miles is covered by Gatun Lake and much of the rest is higher
than the Cut and therefore unsuited for dumps. The amount of material
disposed of would create new land worth untold millions could it have
been dumped along the lake front of Chicago, or in the Hackensack
meadows near New York.
[Illustration: _Photo by S. H. Elliott_
A LOCK-CHAMBER FROM ABOVE]
To load these busy trains there were in the Cut in its busiest days 43
steam shovels mainly of the type that would take five cubic yards of
material at a bite. One load for each of these shovels weighed 8.7 tons
of rock, 6.7 tons of earth, or 8.03 tons of the “run of the Cut”--the
mixed candy of the Culebra shop. March 11, 1911, was the record day for
work on the Central Division of which the Cut is the largest component
part. That day 333 loaded trains were run out and as many in, and 51
steam shovels and 2 cranes with orange peel buckets excavated 127,742
tons of material. It was no day for nervous tourists to go sightseeing
in the Cut.
[Illustration: WHEN THE OBISPO BROKE IN]
Let us watch one of the steam shovels at work. You will notice first
that it requires two railroad tracks for its operation--the one on which
it stands and one by the side on which are the flat cars it is to load.
If the material in which it is to work is clay or sand, the shovel track
is run close to the side of the hill to be cut away; otherwise the
blasters will have preceded it and a great pile of broken rock lies by
the side of the track or covering it before the shovel. Perched on a
seat which revolves with the swinging arm a man guides the great steel
jaws to the point of excavation. A tug at one lever and the jaws begin
to bite into the clay, or root around in the rock pile until the toothed
scoops have filled the great shovel that, closed, is rather bigger than
a boarding house hall bedroom. A tug at another lever and they close. A
third lever causes the arm to swing until it comes to a stop above the
flat car, then with a roar and a clatter the whole load is dumped.
Perhaps then the trouble is just beginning. Once in a while a boulder of
irregular shape rolls about threatening to fall to the ground. With
almost human intelligence the great rigid arm of the shovel follows it,
checking it as it approaches the edge of the car, pushing it back,
buttressing it with other stones, so that when the train gets under way
it may by no chance fall off. Sometimes you see all this done from a
point at which the directing man is invisible and the effect is uncanny.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
UNGAINLY MONSTERS OF STEEL WORKING WITH HUMAN SKILL]
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT
THE CULEBRA CUT
Dazzling colors combined with its colossal proportions make this
man-made gash in nature’s eternal hills a magnificent spectacle. Its
fullest glory will soon be dimmed, for the tropic jungle will cover its
brilliant hues with a robe of green.]
Travelers in Burmah are fond of telling how the trained elephants pile
teak lumber, pushing with tusk and pulling with trunk until the beams
lie level and parallel to an inch. But marvelous as is the delicacy with
which the unwieldy animals perform their work, it is outdone by the
miraculous ingenuity with which the inventive mind of man has adapted
these monsters of steel to their appointed task. We shall see on the
Zone many mechanical marvels, but to my mind the sight of a man, seated
placidly in a comfortable chair, and with a touch on levers making a
twenty foot steel arm, with a pair of scoops each as big as a hogshead
at the end, feel up and down a bit of land until it comes upon a boulder
weighing five tons, then pick it up, deposit it on a flat car, and block
it around with smaller stones to hold it firm--this spectacle I think
will rank with any as an illustration of mechanical genius. It is a pity
old Archimedes, who professed himself able to move the world with a
lever if he could only find a place for his fulcrum, could not sit a
while in the chair of an Isthmian steam shoveler. These men earn from
$210 to $240 a month and are the aristocracy of the mechanical force in
a society where everybody is frankly graded according to his earnings.
They say their work is exceedingly hard upon the nerves, a statement
which I can readily credit after watching them at it. Once in a great
while they deposit the six-ton load of a shovel on top of some laborer’s
head. Incidents of this sort are wearing on their nerves and also upon
the physique of the individual upon whom the burden has been laid. On
several occasions I timed steam shovels working in the Cut on various
sorts of material and found the period occupied in getting a load,
depositing it on the car and getting back into position for another bite
to be a fraction less than two minutes. According to my observations
from five to eight shovel loads filled a car. The car once filled, a big
negro wig-wagged the tidings to the engineer who pulled the train ahead
the length of one car. The Jamaica negro wig-wagging is always a
pleasing spectacle. He seems to enjoy a job as flagman which gives from
five to fifteen minutes of calm reflection to each one minute of
wagging. Far be it from me to question the industry of these sable
Britons by whom the Canal is being built. Their worth in any place,
except that of waiters at the Tivoli Hotel, must be conceded. But their
specialty is undoubtedly wig-wagging.
[Illustration: BUILDING AN UPPER TIER OF LOCKS]
[Illustration: TRAVELING CRANES THAT BEAR THE BRUNT OF BURDEN CARRYING]
[Illustration: _Photo by Brown Bros._
THE FLOOR OF A LOCK]
If we climb upon one of the empty flat cars we will see that upon the
floor of the whole train, usually made up of about 20 cars, is stretched
a stout cable attached to a heavy iron wedge like a snow plow which,
while the train is loading, is on the end car. Hinged sheets of steel
fall into place between the cars, making the train floor continuous from
end to end. If we should accompany the train to the dump--say at the
great fill at Balboa about twelve miles from the Cut--we shall find that
when it has reached its assigned position a curious looking car on which
is an engine which revolves a huge drum, or bull wheel, is attached in
place of the locomotive. The end of the steel cable buried under
hundreds of tons of rock and dirt is fastened to the bull wheel, the
latter begins to revolve and the steel plow begins to travel along the
train thrusting the load off to one side. One side of the flat cars is
built up and the plow is so constructed that the load is thrown to the
other side only. It takes from 7 to 15 minutes to unload a train by this
device which is known as the Lidgerwood Unloader.
[Illustration: EXCAVATING WITH A MONITOR AS CALIFORNIANS DIG GOLD]
Now it is apparent that after a certain number of trains have thus been
unloaded the side of the track on which the load falls, unless it be a
very deep ravine, will presently be so filled up that no more loads can
be dumped there. To smooth out this mound of dirt along the track
another type of snow plow is used, one stretching out a rigid steel arm
ten or twelve feet from the side of the locomotive which pushes it into
the mass of débris. This is called a spreader and as may well be
imagined requires prodigious power. The dump heap thus spread, and
somewhat leveled by hand labor, becomes a base for another track.
In the early days of the work this business of shifting tracks required
the services of hundreds of men. But it grew so steadily under the needs
of the service--they say the Panama Railway runs sideways as well as
lengthwise--that the mechanical genius of American engineers was called
into play to meet the situation. Wherefore behold the track-shifter, an
engine operating a long crane which picks up the track, ties, rails and
all, and swings it to one side three feet or more according to the
elasticity of the track. It takes nine men to operate a track shifter,
and it does the work which took 500 men pursuing the old method of
pulling spikes, shifting ties and rails separately and spiking the rails
down again. It is estimated that by this device the government was saved
several million dollars, to say nothing of an enormous amount of time.
While the Panama Railroad is only 47 miles long it has laid almost 450
miles of rails, and these are continually being taken up and shifted,
particularly those laid on the bed of the Canal in Culebra Cut. It is
perfectly clear that to keep the steam shovels within reaching distance
of the walls they are to dig away, the track on which they operate and
the track on which their attendant dirt trains run must be shifted
laterally every two or three days.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
A STEAM SHOVEL IN OPERATION]
Looking up from the floor of the Canal one had in those days of rushing
construction a prospect at once gigantic, brilliant and awe inspiring.
Between Gold Hill and Contractors Hill the space open to the sky is half
a mile wide and the two peaks tower toward the sky 534 feet to the one
side and 410 on the other. We see again dimly through the smoke of the
struggling locomotives and the fumes of exploding dynamite the prismatic
color of the stripped sides of the hill, though on the higher altitudes
untouched by recent work and unscarred by slides the tropical green has
already covered all traces of man’s mutilations. In time, of course,
all this coloring will disappear and the ships will steam along betwixt
two towering walls of living green.
[Illustration: BIRD’S EYE VIEW OF THE MIRAFLORES LOCKS]
One’s attention, however, when in the Cut is held mainly by its
industrial rather than by its scenic features. For the latter the view
from above, already described, is incalculably the better. But down here
in the depths your mind is gripped by the signs of human activity on
every side. Everything that a machine can do is being done by machinery,
yet there are 6000 men working in this narrow way, men white and black
and of every intermediate and indeterminate shade. Men who talk in
Spanish, French, the gibberish of the Jamaican, in Hindoo, in Chinese.
One thinks it a pity that Col. Goethals and his chief lieutenants could
not have been at the Tower of Babel, for in that event that aspiring
enterprise would never have been halted by so commonplace an obstacle as
the confusion of tongues.
To us as we plod along all seems to be conducted with terrific energy,
but without any recognizable plan. As a matter of fact all is being
directed in accordance with an iron-clad system. That train, the last
cars of which are being loaded, on the second level must be out of the
Cut and on the main line at a fixed hour or there will be a tie-up of
the empties coming back from the distant dumps. That row of holes must
be drilled by five o’clock, for the blast must be fired as soon as the
Cut is emptied of workers. The very tourists on the observation car
going through the Cut must be chary of their questions, for that track
is needed now for a train of material. If they are puzzled by something
they see, it will all be explained to them later by the guide in his
lecture illustrated by the working model at the Tivoli Hotel.
[Illustration: THE ROCK-BREAK THAT ADMITTED THE BAS OBISPO]
So trudging through the Cut we pass under a slender foot bridge
suspended across the Canal from towers of steel framework. The bridge
was erected by the French and will have to come down when the procession
of ships begins the passage of the Canal. Originally its towers were of
wood, but a man idly ascending one thought it sounded hollow beneath his
tread and, on examination, found the interior had been hollowed out by
termite ants leaving a mere shell which might give way under any
unaccustomed strain. This is a pleasant habit of these insects and
sometimes produces rather ludicrous results when a heavy individual
encounters a chair that has engaged their attention.
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier. Courtesy National Geographic
Magazine_
AN ANT’S NEST ON THE SAVANNA]
The activity and industry of the ant are of course proverbial in every
clime, but it seems to me that in the Isthmus particularly he appears to
put the sluggard to shame. As you make your way through the jungle you
will now and again come upon miniature roads, only about four inches
wide it is true, but vastly smoother and better cleaned of vegetation
than the paths which the Panamanians dignify with the name of roads.
Along these highways trudges an endless army of ants, those going
homeward bearing burdens of leaves which, when buried in their
subterranean homes, produce fungi on which the insects live. Out on the
savanna you will occasionally find a curious mound of hard dirt,
sometimes standing taller than a man and rising abruptly from the plain.
It is an ant’s nest built about a shrub or small tree, which usually
dies off so that no branches protrude in any direction. A large one
represents long years of the work of the tiny insects. Col. Goethals has
made a great working machine of the Canal organization but he can teach
the ants nothing so far as patient and continuous industry is concerned.
[Illustration: A TERMITE ANT’S NEST
The ants’ work kills the tree]
We come in due time to the upper entrance of the Pedro Miguel lock. Here
the precipitous sides of the Canal have vanished, and the walls of the
lock have in fact to be built up above the adjacent land. This is the
end of the Central Division--the end of the Culebra Cut. The 8.8 miles
we have left behind us have been the scene, perhaps, of the most
wonderful exercise of human ingenuity, skill and determination ever
manifested in any equal space in the world--and I won’t even except Wall
Street, where ingenuity and skill in cutting things down are matter of
daily observation. But nowhere else has man locked with nature in so
desperate a combat. More spectacular engineering is perhaps to be seen
on some of the railroads through our own Sierras or on the trans-Andean
lines. Such dams as the Roosevelt or the Shoshone of our irrigation
service are more impressive than the squat, immovable ridge at Gatun.
But the engineers who planned the campaign against the Cordilleras at
Culebra had to meet and overcome more novel obstacles, had to wrestle
with a problem more appalling in magnitude than any that ever confronted
men of their profession in any other land or time.
[Illustration: DEEP SEA-DREDGE AT BALBOA]
As no link in a chain is of less importance than any other link, so the
Pacific Division of the Panama Canal is of equal importance with the
other two. It has not, however, equally spectacular features. Its locks
at Pedro Miguel and at Miraflores are merely replicas of the Gatun locks
with different drops, and separated into one step of two parallel locks
at the former point, and two steps, with four locks in pairs at
Miraflores. Between the two locks is an artificial lake about 54²⁄₃
feet above sea level and about a mile and a half long. The lake is
artificial, supplied partly by small rivers that flow into it and partly
by the water that comes down from the operation of the locks above. In
fact it was created largely for the purpose of taking care of this
water, though it also served to reduce somewhat the amount of dry
excavation on the Canal. One advantage which both the Gatun and
Miraflores lakes have for the sailor, that does not at first occur to
the landsman, is that being filled with fresh water, as also is the main
body of the Canal, they will cleanse the bottoms of the ships passing
through of barnacles and other marine growths. This is a notable benefit
to ships engaged in tropical trade, for in those latitudes their bottoms
become befouled in a way that seriously interferes with their steaming
capacity.
[Illustration: PROPORTIONS OF THE LOCKS
A six story building would stand in the lock-chamber. Size of conduits
indicated by small sketches of wagon and locomotive.]
The name Pedro Miguel is given to this lock because the French began
operations there on the feast day of St. Peter Michael, whose name in
Spanish is applied to the spot. An omniscient gentleman on the train
once assured me that the name came from a Spanish hermit who long lived
on the spot in the odor of sanctity--and divers other odors if the
haunts of the hermits I have visited elsewhere were any criterion.
Errors of fact, however, are common on the zone. They still laugh about
a congressman who, on Gatun dam, struck an attitude and exclaimed with
feeling--“At last then I stand in the far-famed Culebra Cut”! which spot
was a trifle more than thirty miles away.
From the lower lock at Miraflores the canal describes a practically
straight course to the Pacific Ocean at Balboa, about 4¹⁄₂ miles. The
channel is continued out to sea about four miles further. All the
conditions of the Pacific and Oriental trade give assurance that at
Balboa will grow the greatest of all purely tropical ports. To it the
commerce of the whole Pacific coast of North America, and of South
America as far south at least as Lima, will irresistibly flow. To it
will also come the trade of Japan, Northern China and the Philippines,
seeking the shortest route to Europe or to our own Atlantic coast. It is
true that much of this trade will pass by, but the ships will enter the
Canal after long voyages in need of coal and in many cases of refitting.
The government has anticipated this need by providing for a monster dry
dock, able to accommodate the 1000 foot ships yet to be built, and
establishing repair shops fit to build ships as well as to repair them.
In 1913, however, when this trip through the Canal under construction
was made, little sign of this coming greatness was apparent. The old
dock of the Pacific Mail and a terminal pier of the Panama Railroad
afforded sufficient dockage for the steamships of which eight or ten a
week cleared or arrived. The chief signs of the grandeur yet to come
were the never-ceasing dirt trains rumbling down from Culebra Cut and
discharging their loads into the sea in a great fan shaped “fill” that
will afford building sites for all the edifices of the future Balboa,
however great it may become. Looking oceanward you see the three conical
islands on which the United States is already erecting its
fortifications.
[Illustration: THE GREAT FILL AT BALBOA WHERE THE CULEBRA SPOIL IS
DUMPED]
Here then the Canal ends. Begun in the ooze of Colon it is finished in
the basaltic rock of Balboa. To carry it through its fifty miles the
greatest forces of nature have been utilized when possible; fought and
overcome when not. It has enlisted genius, devotion and sacrifice, and
has inflicted sickness, wounds and death. We can figure the work in
millions of dollars, or of cubic yards, but to estimate the cost in life
and health from the time the French began until the day the Americans
ended is a task for the future historian, not the present-day
chronicler.