the United States, except on the point of giving the world something essential to its convenience. It is hypocritical to profess that we made adequate compensation when we paid Panama for the Canal Zone. We must applaud President Roosevelt for taking the Canal Zone, but the failure to make reparation to Colombia is a conspicuous piece of self-deception and moral obliquity. We raised the Maine, however, and we will yet make amends to Colombia.

NA

CHAPTER IX

THE GEOGRAPHY OF PANAMA

ATURE quietly, but imperatively, asked the engineers who favored a sea-level canal at Panama: Why will you insist upon the prodigious disarrangement of natural advantages that lie here awaiting the utilization of a lock type?

The geography of the Isthmus is adapted peculiarly to the lock type of canal. Aside from the obstacle to a sea-level canal that existed in the continental divide, the Chagres River followed a course which, at the same time, would have been a baffling problem in a sea-level plan, but the most beneficent arrangement for a lock-type canal.

The territory comprised in the scope of this book is the same as that within the boundaries of the Republic of Panama. In area, it is about 32,000 square miles, slightly smaller than the State of Indiana. On the Atlantic side it is 379 miles long, and on the Pacific side, 674 miles by the coast line. The population, native and foreign, is around 400,000 to-day, though considerably less in the days of exploration and conquest.

Our treaty with the Republic of Panama ceded us a strip of territory ten miles wide, from deep water in the Atlantic to deep water in the Pacific. This territory, officially designated the Canal Zone, is de

termined by a line drawn five miles from each side of the center line of the route of the canal. Thus, the Canal Zone is not bounded by straight lines from ocean to ocean, but curves as the channel of the canal curves. The area of the Canal Zone is 448 square miles, of which 73 square miles are privately owned, but may be bought in the discretion of the United States. While within the limits of the Canal Zone, the cities of Panama and Colon, at the terminals, remain under the sovereignty of the Republic of Pan

ama.

Some confusion is caused by the fact that the Isthmus of Panama runs nearly East and West, instead of North and South, as might be imagined, at the point where the canal traverses it. Panama city is almost due south of Buffalo, and is southeast of Colon, the Atlantic terminal. The canal route, therefore, runs in a southeastern direction from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and, to the astonishment of the tourist, the sun rises in the Pacific and sets in the Atlantic.

We are not building our canal at the narrowest point on the Isthmus. This point is found at the Gulf of San Blas, 60 miles east of Colon, where the Isthmus is only 30 miles wide, whereas, at Panama, it is 47 miles wide. Because the mountain barrier at San Blas has an elevation of 700 feet above sea-level, no serious thought of a canal there ever was entertained long. The absence of rivers makes the sealevel type the only kind of canal that could have been attempted at San Blas, involving a staggering task of excavation. Besides, it was in the complete grasp