CHAPTER XVI

BEGINNING THE WORK

THE canal, after all, is the thing. The ancient history, the diplomacy, the politics, and what not of the Isthmus, are not void of interest, but interest in the canal is paramount. It was for a canal that we first went to the Isthmus, generations ago, and it is for the canal that we are there at the present time. It is to the canal that the American mind instinctively turns at mention of Panama. What of the canal? Are we really to have one at last? What kind of a canal is it to be? What hope have we of succeeding where De Lesseps so disastrously failed? What is actually being done upon the great work at the present time? These and a host of other questions naturally arise. There are many which time alone can answer. But there are some fundamental facts concerning the canal which may now be stated with confidence, and which those who have personally gone over the line and investigated all its conditions at first hand and at close range see in a far different light from that of those who look upon the work from afar, through a mist of prejudice and more or less fantastic legends.

We are, then, to have a canal. That is assured to us, and in the near future, as much as any great human achievement can be assured. So far as diplomacy and legislation are concerned, it is well known to the world that complete arrangements have been made for the canal. The statesmanship of Theodore Roosevelt and John Hay has compassed the end which Columbus and Cortez vainly sought. It may be added that upon the engineering and material side the canal is no less assured to us. The skill and energy of American engineers are moving toward success where Ferdinand de

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Lesseps met with egregious failure. It would be difficult for any one to visit Panama and see what has been done, what is being done, and what can be done, without being converted to the belief that it is, of all places, the place for a gateway between the oceans. We used to hear much about the great Cordillera, the "mighty mountain wall of the Andes," the "backbone of the continent," which must be broken through or passed over. De Lesseps once talked of a ship tunnel through the mountain as a feature of his proposed sea-level canal, and I remember seeing seriously meant sketches of a tall-masted ship entering a huge bore, with a cloudcapped Andean peak towering far above. Now, the fact is, that if a tunnel were made, its roof would be so thin that we should have to put in rafters to hold it up! I went one day to the top of the highest peak on the whole line of the canal, climbing thither upon the back of one of Uncle Samuel's little army ponies. It was worth while. The outlook was extended and inspiring; a vast amphitheatre of mountains sweeping almost around the horizon. Some one in the party murmured a reminiscence of Church's "Heart of the Andes," which was not altogether inappro priate, considering the vast expanse of wilderness before us, and imagining the ever-present vultures on their untiring wings to be their greater cousins, the condors. But if truth must be confessed, the Andean peak upon which we stood, the loftiest elevation between the Caribbean and the Pacific, was little more than three hundred feet above sea level! I do not suppose that was the very "peak in Darien" upon which stout Cortez-or Balboa-stood, when his men "looked at each other with a wild surmise." It could not have been, for Balboa crossed at St. Michael's Gulf. But I doubt if their amazement could have been more marked and grateful than that of those who, after those fairy tales of mountain walls, realised that this was all there was of it, and that a ridge of soft earth and friable rock, nowhere as much as three hundred feet high, was the only barrier to a sea-level canal between the oceans! To say that such a

barrier is insuperable would be to discredit engineering science.

The French companies failed, it is true. Why they failed I have already tried to make clear. But they did not labour in vain. They did a great deal of work, and provided a great deal of material which can now be used in our completion of the canal. Practically all their excavation work can thus be utilised, whether in the great cut at Culebra or on the tidal flats where the canal is already navigable. No less to the purpose is it to observe that much of the machinery taken thither by them, even by the original De Lesseps company, was found by our engineers, on taking possession, still in serviceable condition. There were, of course, some things which could not be used. I doubt if it would have been worth while to furbish up the sectional steamboats which were lying around on the hilltops, and I am quite sure that the consignments of snow-shovels which were received there in the days of De Lesseps will never be needed. But in purchasing the title and plant of the French company we secured something far more than the proverbial "right of way and two streaks of rust." We secured millions of dollars' worth of useful machinery and materials and of work well done.

Under the authority of the Spooner bill, as the law for the construction of the canal was termed, the President went forward with promptness and energy. He waited for nothing but for the canal treaty with Panama to be ratified by our deliberate Senate. He submitted that convention to the Senate on December 7, 1903. It was not ratified until February 23, 1904. Six days later, on February 29, 1904, he appointed an Isthmian Canal Commission of seven members, who were duly confirmed by the Senate on March 3. The Commissioners were John G. Walker, a Rear-Admiral of the United States Navy, on the retired list, who had been at the head of former canal commissions for the purpose of investigation and report; George W. Davis, a Major-General of the United States Army, on the retired list; William B.