The Panama Canal

The line hotels were, more properly speaking, merely dining-rooms where the American employees were furnished substantial meals for 30 cents each. Outsiders paid 50 cents each for these meals. They were up to a very high standard. Once the late Senator Thomas H. Carter, of Montana, was a member of a Senate committee visiting the Isthmus and he invited the subsistence officer, Maj. Wilson, to come to Washington and show the manager of the Senate restaurant how to prepare a good meal. A year later, after Senator Albert B. Cummins, of Iowa, had eaten one of the lunches at Gatun, he renewed the invitation of Senator Carter, telling Maj. Wilson he was sure that if he were to come Senators would get better meals for their money. At one of the Congressional hearings on the Isthmus Representative T. W. Sims, of Tennessee, asked that the menu of a meal he had eaten at one of these hotels be inserted in the record. Major Wilson inserted the menu for several days instead. The following is the menu at the Cristobal Hotel for January 20, 1912:

Breakfast.—Oranges, sliced bananas, oatmeal, eggs to order, German potatoes, ham or bacon, hot cakes, maple sirup, tea, coffee, cocoa.

Lunch.—Vegetable soup, fried pork chops, apple sauce, boiled potatoes, pork and beans, sliced buttered beets, stewed cranberries, creamed parsnips, lemon meringue pie, tea, coffee, cocoa.

Dinner.—Consomme vermicelli, beefsteak, natural gravy, lyonnaise potatoes, stewed beans, sliced beets, stewed apples, carrots a la Julienne, hot biscuits, ice-cream, chocolate cake, tea, coffee, cocoa.

The line hotels in 1912, which were operated at a loss of $12,000, served over 2,000,000 meals. The cost of the supplies per meal amounted to $0.2504 and the service to $0.0165, making the average meal cost $0.3065, while the employees were charged 30 cents. Approximately 2,000 Americans were continuous patrons of the line hotels.

The messes for European laborers were operated in 1912 at a total cost of $405,000. The returns from their operations amounted to $443,000, showing a net profit of $38,000 on 1,108,000 rations. The net profit per day's ration approximated 3¹⁄₂ cents. The supplies entering into the ration cost $0.3106 and the service of preparing it $0.0547.

The national diet for Europeans would appear very monotonous to Americans. For the Spaniards who constituted the major portion of the European employees, it was a "rancho," which is a mixture of stewed meat, potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes and garbanzos heavily flavored with Spanish sweet pepper. Their soups were made very stiff, really a meal in themselves, since they were about the consistency of Irish stew mashed up. A day's ration for Spanish laborers ran about as follows:

Breakfast.—Roast beef, pork sausage, corned-beef, sardines or bacon, one-half loaf of bread, chocolate and milk.

Dinner.—Garbanzos or macaroni, roast beef or hamburger steak, fried potatoes, oranges or bananas, one-half loaf of bread, coffee.

Supper.—Rice soup, peas or beans, rancho, one-quarter loaf of bread, tea.

The Government charged the European laborers 40 cents a day for their meals. Their mess halls were large, airy, comfortable and conspicuously clean. The European laborers nearly all patronized these mess halls; about 3,200 of them constantly were fed at these places.

Wherever there was a West Indian negro settlement along the line of the canal the commission operated a mess kitchen. These kitchens were kept scrupulously clean and the laborers were furnished meals at 9 cents each. Each laborer who patronized the kitchen had his little kit into which the attendants put his meal, and he could carry it anywhere he desired to eat it. In spite of the fact that these meals corresponded almost exactly to the American Regular Army field rations, they were never popular with the West Indian negroes. Although there were some 25,000 of these laborers on the canal in 1912, only a little more than a half million rations were issued to them during the year. Less than 15 per cent of the negro force patronized the commission kitchen.

The following is a specimen day's ration in a West Indian kitchen:

Breakfast.—Cocoa and milk, porridge, bread, jam.

Dinner.—Pea soup, beef, doughboys, rice, bread, bananas.

Supper.—Stewed beef, boiled potatoes, stewed navy beans, bread, tea.

During the construction period of the canal the average American received approximately $150 a month for his labor. Those who were married and remained in the service a reasonable time were provided, rent free, with family quarters. Their light bills were never rendered, the coal for their kitchen stoves cost them nothing, and the iceman never came around to collect. The bachelors were provided with bachelor quarters with the necessary furniture for making them comfortable. The average married quarters cost from $1,200 to $1,800 each, and the average quarters for a bachelor about $500 to construct. The higher officials had separate houses; lesser officials were furnished with semi-detached houses. The majority of the rank and file of American married employees were housed in roomy, four-flat houses. The verandas were broad and screened in with the best copper netting, and all quarters were provided with necessary furniture at Government expense.

The assignment of quarters and furniture called for a great deal of diplomacy on the part of the quartermaster's department, since, if Mrs. Jones happened to visit Mrs. Smith, and found that she had a swell-front dresser in her bedroom, while her own was a straight-front dresser, an irate lady was very shortly calling on the district quartermaster and demanding to know why such discrimination should be practiced. Perhaps she had been on the Canal Zone longer than Mrs. Smith, and felt that if anyone were entitled to the swell-front dresser she was the one. The district quartermaster had to explain with all the patience at his command that it was not a case of discrimination but merely that the commission had bought swell-front dressers at a later date for the same price that it formerly had paid for the straight-front ones, and that consequently the people who furnished houses later got them.

On another occasion Mrs. Brown, calling on Mrs. White, found that Mrs. White had an electric light on her side porch. She immediately fared forth to pull the hair of the quartermaster for this discrimination, but was somewhat taken back when that official calmly informed her that the light had been put there for a few days in anticipation of a children's party that was to be given by Mrs. White one night that week.

The marvelous success of the commissary, not only in affording its patrons better service at lower prices, but also in making a substantial profit on the undertaking, had been referred to as the most valuable lesson taught by the whole canal digging operation. It has proved the efficiency of government agencies in fields far removed from the ordinary operations of government, and it may be that its experience will be used to advantage in combating the high cost of living in the United States itself.

CHAPTER XV

It's an odd thing—this transplanting a man from the temperate to the torrid zone. It affects men of different nations in different ways. It is disastrous in inverse ratio to the adaptability of the man transplanted. A German or a Dutchman goes to the Tropics and almost without a struggle yields to the demands of the new climate all his orderly daily habits. Your Dutchman in Java will, except on state occasions, wear the native dress (or undress); eat the native food; live in the native house; and, like as not, take a native woman to wife. One thing only—he will retain his schnapps. The German is only a little less adaptable, clings only a little longer to the routine of the Fatherland, but he, too, keeps his beer.

Your Englishman, on the contrary, defies the tropical sun and scorns to make any changes in his daily habit that he had not fixed upon as necessary and proper before he left his right little, tight little, island. He does, it is true, wear a pith helmet. That is due partly, perhaps, to his fear of the sun, but it is much more due to the fact that he associates it with lands where faces are not white; therefore he wears it in Egypt in the winter when it is shivery cold with the same religious devotion that he wears it in India when the mercury is running out of the top of the thermometer. Your Englishman, it is true, wears white duck clothes in the Tropics, but not the fiercest heat that old Sol ever produced could induce him for one moment to exchange his flannel underwear for cotton or to leave off his woolen hose. It is a pretty theory and not without much support, that it is this British defiance of tropical customs that has given him the mastery over Tropic peoples. And wherever goes the Briton there goes also Scotch-and-soda.

The Americans steer a middle course. They dress for the heat and make themselves comfortable as possible. They consume even greater quantities of ice than they do at home, and the average American eats every day in summer enough ice to kill a score of Englishmen. At least, that's what the Englishmen would think.

But the American in the Tropics tenaciously clings to many of his home habits, despite the changed conditions of his place of sojourn. He must have his bath, even though he talks less about it than the Englishman. He must have his three square meals a day, and breakfast must be a real breakfast. He demands screens to protect him from pestiferous insects, no less for comfort's sake than health's. And then he demands two other things—a soda fountain and a base-ball team.

It is true that he often will indulge in a British peg of Scotch-and-soda, or in a German stein of beer, but the native drink that he takes with him to the Tropics, and one that he alone consumes, and the one that he, in season and out of season, demands, is the sweet, innocent, and non-alcoholic product of the soda fountain. How incomprehensible is this to the sons of other nations no American may ever understand.

It may seem to be going far field to discuss even in the general way the differing tempers of men of different nations transplanted from a temperate to a torrid clime. But, as a matter of fact, it has a direct bearing on the accomplishment at Panama, of which Americans are so proud.

When the Americans first undertook the task, the denizens of the Isthmus prepared for them only such entertainment as had been acceptable in other days. The only places open to the tired worker in the evening were the saloons, selling bad whiskey and worse beer; or darker hells of sure and quick damnation. There were no theaters that would appeal to the American taste, no sports that the clean American would tolerate. In short, when the American in the early days of the construction was wearied with that weariness that would not respond to resting, there was but one thing left. He got home—sick and drunk.

In those early days there were few women. Most of the men who came then were moved rather by a spirit of adventure than by a determination to share in a tremendous job of work, and such men were not married. It was not long until the men at the head discovered that the married men were more content, that they lost less time from the work, and produced more results when on the job than did the bachelors. (This, of course, must not be taken as an indictment against every individual bachelor who worked at Panama, but rather as a characterization based on the average of that class.) Thus in the very order of things it became the policy of the commission to encourage unmarried men at work to marry, and to bring married men from the States rather than bachelors. Inducements were held out, putting a premium on matrimony. The bachelor worker had good quarters, but he perhaps shared but a room in a bungalow, whereas the married man had a four-room house of his own, with a big porch, and free furniture, free light, and the problem of the cost of living solved by the paternal commissary.

So matrimony flourished. But when the women came in increasing numbers, and with them many children, another problem arose. Women born in temperate climes suffer more in the Tropics than do men. The dry, dry heat of the dry season is succeeded by the wet, wet heat of the rainy months. There is never any escape from that horrible, hateful, hellish heat. Is it to be baked or steamed? The changing seasons offer no other alternative. And the Fear! Not for a moment may one forget that sickness and death stalk in the jungle; that a glass of water or an unscreened door may be the end of it all. There is no normality, no relaxation, no care free rest for the woman in the Tropics.

At Panama her housekeeping duties were lightened by the excellence of the commissary system, so that they were not enough to keep her mind occupied. She became homesick and hysterical.

So, then, it being desirable to have married men on the job, it became necessary to do something to keep the women at the minimum stage of unhappiness. The Y. M. C. A. clubhouse, with their gymnasiums, their libraries, their games, their sports, and their clubiness, had been the substitute for home offered to the lonely American man at Panama. The Civic Federation was invited to do what it could for the women. It sent an agent of the American Federation of Women's Clubs to Panama, who organized women's clubs, and these, by putting the women to work, made them, in a measure, forget the Heat and the Fear.

Miss Helen Varick Boswell visited the Isthmus in the fall of 1907 and assisted the women in forming their clubs. She found them literally hungry for such activities and they responded with a will to her suggestion. The result was frequent meetings in every town in the Canal Zone and innumerable activities on the part of the women interested in club work.

The transformation was most remarkable. Where almost every woman on the Isthmus seemed to be unhappy, now everyone who needed an outlet for her mental and social instincts found it in club work. Where once they quarreled and disputed about their house furnishings, life on the Isthmus, and the general status of things on the Canal Zone, now the women seemed to take a happy and contented view of things, and became as much interested in the work of building the canal as were their husbands, their fathers, and their brothers. Looking back over the task, and realizing how much longer the married men stayed on the job, and how much more essential they were to the completion of the canal than the bachelors, the cares of the canal authorities to keep the women satisfied was a master stroke.

When the club movement was launched one of the first steps was to organize classes in Spanish. Women from every part of the Zone attended these Spanish classes and took up the work of learning the language with zeal. Comparatively few of them had any opportunity to learn Spanish, even in its most rudimentary form, from household servants, since the same lethargy that characterized the native men of Panama, and made them totally indifferent to the opportunities for work on the Canal Zone, also characterized the Panaman women, with the results that most of the American households at Panama had English-speaking Jamaican servants instead of Spanish-speaking Panamans.

The servant problem was not as serious as it is in the average American city. There was always a full supply of Jamaican negro women ready for engagement as household servants. They were polite and efficient. Almost without exception they had a deeply religious turn of mind, although they might transgress the Mosaic law far enough to substitute plain water for violet water on the boudoir table of their mistresses. Usually they were very neat of person and very careful in the manner of doing their work. The wages they commanded were approximately equal to those asked in the ordinary American city.

The greatest social diversion of the Isthmus, of course, was dancing. Every two weeks the Tivoli Club gave a dance at the Tivoli Hotel. Trains to carry visitors were run all the way across the Isthmus and no American ever needed to miss a dance at the Tivoli Hotel because of unsuitable railroad accommodations.

Each small town had its own dancing clubs and in those towns where there were Y. M. C. A. buildings, the dances were held in them. The new Hotel Washington proved a very popular rendezvous for the dancers, and in the future the big functions of this kind probably will alternate between the Tivoli at one end of the canal and the Washington at the other.

The university men maintained the University Club in the city of Panama, directly on the water front. This club frequently opened its doors to women and its functions were always regarded as events in Isthmian social history. In Colon there was organized several years ago a club known as the Stranger's Club. This club, as did the University Club at Panama, welcomed the American stranger.

The Isthmian Canal Commission always looked carefully after the religious activities of the people of the Canal Zone. Its provision of places of worship and facilities for getting to them was strictly nonsectarian, and directed solely to giving every sect and every faith opportunity to worship in its own way. Several chaplains were maintained at Government expense, and railroad and wagonette service for carrying people to their places of worship was maintained throughout the years of the American occupation.

The West Indian negroes were provided with churches and with homes for the leaders of their spiritual flocks. Church buildings were erected at every settlement, and in many cases were so constructed that the lower story could be used for a church and the second story for lodge purposes. These buildings were 70 by 36 feet, with lodge rooms 60 by 36 feet.

The women on the Canal Zone were interested in religious work from the beginning of their residence there. An Isthmian Sunday School Association maintained church extension work. When the Women's Federation of Clubs finally disbanded, in April, 1913, it presented its library to this association and its pictures to the Ancon Study Club. There was an art society at Ancon, which did much to foster art work on the Zone during the days of the canal construction. The organization of Camp Fire Girls extended its activities to Panama, and many leading women there contributed both means and time to help the girls on the Isthmus.

The women of the Zone did not fail to enlist themselves in any movement for good in their communities. A few years since there was a little blind boy on the Isthmus and the Federation of Women's Clubs decided that he ought to have better educational advantages than could be provided at Panama. Therefore, they agreed to finance his going to Boston to enter an institution for the education of the blind. When the Federation disbanded, owing to the gradual departure of members for the States, it did not do so until it had created a committee which was to continue indefinitely in charge of the education of this blind boy.

Many secret societies existed on the Isthmus, the oldest one made up of Americans being the Sojourners Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons, organized in Colon in 1898. There were Odd Fellows' lodges and lodges of Redmen, Modern Woodmen, Knights of Pythias, Elks, Junior Order of American Mechanics, and representative bodies of many other American secret orders. An Isthmian order is that of the Kangaroos, whose motto is: "He is best who does best." This order was organized in 1907 under the laws of Tennessee, and the mother council was organized at Empire the same year. The object of the Kangaroos is to hold mock sessions of court and to extract from them all of the fun and, at the same time, all of the good that they will yield.

The men on the Isthmus, almost completely isolated as they were from American political concerns, never allowed their interest in political affairs at home to become completely atrophied. There was a common saying that the Panamans were the only people on the Isthmus that could vote, but at times the Americans would at least simulate politics at home with the resulting campaigns and elections. During the presidential campaign of 1912 it was decided to hold a mock election in several of the American settlements. The elections were for national offices and for municipal offices as well. There were a number of parties, and in the national elections there were the usual group of insurgents, progressives, reactionaries, and the like.

There were nominations for dog catchers and town grouches, while the party platforms abounded in all the political claptrap of the ordinary American document of like nature. Cartoons were circulated showing the Panama Railroad to be a monopolistic corporation; flaring handbills proving that the latest town grouch had not acquitted himself properly in office; statistical tables showing that the dog catcher had allowed more dogs to get away from him than he had caught; and all sorts of other campaign tricks and dodges were brought into play, just as though there were real issues at stake and real men to be elected. At Colon the presidential returns showed 33 votes for Taft, 200 for Wilson and 224 for Roosevelt. There were 204 votes in favor of Woman Suffrage, both state and national, and 75 votes against it.

As has been said, when the American first went to Panama the only diversion a man could find was to go to a cheap saloon and meet his friends. It was a condition that was as unsatisfactory to the men themselves as it was to the moral sentiment of those behind the work, and almost as dangerous to the success of the undertaking as would have been an outbreak of some epidemic disease. This led the commission to urge the erection of clubhouses in several of the more populous settlements, to be conducted under the auspices of the Young Men's Christian Association, but to be operated on a basis that would bring to the people those rational amusements of which they stood so much in need.

From time to time clubhouses of this type were established in seven of the American settlements and the work they did in promoting the contentment and happiness of the people can be appreciated only by those who have witnessed the conditions of living in Canal Zone towns where there were no such clubhouses.

Almost the first effect of the construction of a clubhouse was a heavy falling off in barroom attendance, and simultaneously a decline in the receipts from the sales of liquor. It is estimated that these receipts fell off 75 per cent within a short time after the clubhouses were opened. The men who had been buying beer at 25 cents a bottle, or whiskey at 15 cents a thimbleful, were now frequenting the clubhouses, playing billiards, rolling tenpins, writing letters, reading their home papers, or engaging in other diversions which served to banish homesickness.

When the Y. M. C. A. clubhouses were opened a practical man was put at the head of each. While no one would think of card-playing or dancing at a Y. M. C. A. in the States, both were to be found in the association clubhouses of the Isthmus. Bowling alleys, billiard rooms, gymnasiums, and many other features for entertainment were established in the clubhouses. Bowling teams were organized; billiard and pool contests were started; gymnastic instruction was given; pleasant reading rooms with easy chairs, cool breezes, and good lights were provided; circulating libraries were established; good soda fountains were put in operation where one could get a glass of soda long enough to quench the deepest thirst; and in general the clubhouses were made the most attractive places in town—places where any man, married or single, might spend his leisure moments with profit and with pleasure.

Every effort was put forth to capitalize the spirit of rivalry in the interest of the men. The result was that in each clubhouse there were continuous contests of one kind or another, which afforded entertainment for those engaged and held the interest of those who were looking on. Then the champions of each clubhouse, whether individuals or teams, were pitted against the stars of other places, and in this way there was always "something doing" around each clubhouse.

In addition to maintaining a supervision over the sports of the Isthmus, the clubhouses provided night schools for those who desired to improve such educational opportunities. These night schools were rather well patronized by the new arrivals on the Isthmus, but there is something in that climate which, after a man has been there for a year, makes him want to rest whenever he is off duty. Going to night school became an intolerable bore by that time, so very few men kept up their attendance after the first year. The study of Spanish was found to be one exception to this rule, for, besides the satisfaction of being able to talk with native Panamans and the Spaniards, there was the hope of financial reward. Any employee who could pass an examination in Spanish stood a better show of getting promotion in the service. Besides, the man who had grit enough to carry through a course of study on the Isthmus, with its enervating climate, was almost certain to climb the ladder of success wherever he went.

A review of the work of the seven Y. M. C. A. clubhouses for 1912 gives a good idea of what they did during the entire construction period. It required a force of 42 Americans and 64 West Indians to operate these seven clubhouses. Twelve of the Americans were paid out of the funds of the Canal Commission and 30 out of the funds of the Y. M. C. A. Of the negro employees 43 were paid by the Canal Commission and 21 by the Y. M. C. A. The American force for all seven clubhouses consisted of one superintendent, four secretaries, four assistant secretaries, one clerk, ten night clerks, six bowling alley night attendants, six pool room night attendants, and seven barbers. At the end of that year there were 2,100 members of the Y. M. C. A., no less than 58 per cent of all the American employees living in towns having clubhouses being members of the association.

During the year seven companies of players and musicians were engaged to provide amusement a the clubhouses. They gave 85 entertainments which had a total attendance of 21,000. Local talent and moving pictures provided 406 entertainments with a total attendance of 96,000. Amateur oratorio societies, operatic troupes, minstrel troupes, glee clubs, mixed choruses, vaudeville and black-face sketches were organized during the year through the efforts of the members cooperating with the secretaries. These organizations made the whole circuit of the Isthmus. Weekly moving-picture exhibitions were given and a man was employed who gave his entire attention to them. Carefully chosen films were ordered from the United States, special attention being given to educational features.

Special tournaments in bowling, billiards, and pool were organized and gold, silver, and bronze medals were awarded the winners. Over a hundred thousand bowling games and nearly 300,000 games of pool and billiards were played during the year. Trained physical directors were employed to direct the gymnastic exercises at the clubhouses and there was an attendance of 15,000 at these classes during the year. A pentathlon meet was held at Empire for the purpose of developing all-around athletes. Religious meetings and song services were held at such times as not to interfere with the organized religious work on the Zone, the average attendance at 214 meetings being 50 and the average attendance at Bible and discussion clubs 52. The average enrollment was 65 in the Spanish class. Forty-two thousand books were withdrawn for home reading during the year.

Soft drinks, ice-cream, light lunches, and the like were served on the cool verandas of the clubhouses, the receipts from these sales amounting to approximately $50,000. Nearly 4,000 calls on hospital patients were made by committees for the visitation of the sick. Boys from 10 to 16 years of age were allowed special privileges in the clubhouses, and the secretaries arranged several outings during the year. The total boys' membership was 146. The disbursements from the funds of the Isthmian Canal Commission amounted to $50,000 and those from clubhouse funds amounted to $114,000. The total receipts for the year amounted to $118,000. The affairs of the clubhouses were in the hands of the advisory committee appointed by the chairman and chief engineer of the Isthmian Canal Commission.

In providing amusements the Canal Commission overlooked no opportunity in the way of furnishing special trains and affording other facilities for encouraging play by the canal workers. Each town had its ball team and its ball park, and there was just as much enthusiasm in watching the standing of the several clubs in the isthmian League as in the States in watching the performances of the several clubs in the American and National leagues. When there was a championship series to be played there was just as much excitement over it as if it were a post-season contest between the Athletics and the Giants.

It is probable that better amusements will be provided under the permanent régime than were during the construction period. With ships constantly passing through the canal, many opera companies, especially those from Spain and Italy, will have opportunity to stop for a night or two at Panama, while their ships are coaling or shipping cargo. In Panama City there is a splendid theater built by the Panaman Government largely out of funds derived from payments made by the United States on account of the canal rights.

As the major portion of the permanent force will be quartered at Ancon and Balboa, they will be able to drive to the theater or take the street car. A new street-car system has just been established, and those who can not afford the luxury of carriages will find in it opportunities for taking airings as well as going to the theater. This system runs from the permanent settlement at Balboa through the city of Panama and down over the savannahs towards old Panama. It is the first street-car system ever operated on the Isthmus, and will probably prove much more satisfactory than the little, old, dirty coaches which have afforded the only means of transportation on the Zone.

The building of a number of roads along the canal to facilitate the movement of military forces has made it possible to get a satisfactory use of automobiles. Agencies already have been opened for a number of the lower-priced cars in anticipation that a large number of the canal employees will buy automobiles in order to get the benefit of these good roads. There are few places where automobiling affords more pleasant diversion than at Panama. After the sun goes down the evenings are just cool enough and the breezes just strong enough to make an automobile ride a delightful experience.

There are good opportunities for lovers of hunting and fishing on the Isthmus. There is wild game in plenty—deer abounding in the entire region contiguous to the canal and alligators being found in all of the principal streams. There are both sea and river fishing, and some tapirs and other wild animals still are left to attract the efforts of the modern huntsman.

The entertainment headquarters on the Canal Zone under the permanent occupation will be the big clubhouse at Balboa, which is being built at a cost of about $50,000. This clubhouse will not only have all of the features of the clubhouses of the construction period, but will be equipped with a large auditorium, with a complete library and with every facility for amusement and entertainment that experience on the Isthmus has called for.

It can not be said that social life on the Isthmus during the period of canal construction was ideal. Its inspiration was to be found in the desire to make the best of a bad situation. Men and women all knew that their stay in Panama was but temporary, none of them looked upon the Canal Zone as home, and all of them counted time in two eras—Before we came to Panama, and When we leave Panama.

Of course there was dining and dancing, and the bridge tables were never idle. But every dinner hostess knew that every guest knew exactly what every dish on the table cost, and she knew that guest knew she knew. The family income was fixed and public. All one had to do was to read the official bulletins.

The same paternalistic commissary that reduced the cost of living and made housekeeping so easy, also tended with socialistic frankness to bring everybody to a dead level. It was useless to attempt any of the little deceits that make life so interesting at home.

Although the American is a home-loving animal, he managed to get on fairly well in the alien atmosphere of the Tropic jungle. He brought with him his home life, his base ball and his soda fountain. And, considering how such things go in the Tropics, he managed to live a clean life while he was doing a clean piece of work.

CHAPTER XVI

The idea of a canal through the American Isthmus was in the mind of Charles V of Spain as early as 1520. In that year he ordered surveys to ascertain the practicability of a canal connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific. His son, Philip II did not agree with him about the desirability of a trans-Isthmian waterway, holding that a shipway through the Isthmus would give to other nations easy access to his new possessions, and in time of war might be of greater advantage to his enemies than to himself. He invoked the Bible to put an end to these propositions to dig a canal across the American Isthmus, calling to mind that the Good Book declared that "what God hath joined together let no man put asunder."

The policy of Philip was continued for about two centuries, although in the reign of his father many efforts had been made in the direction of a ship waterway across the Isthmus. In fact, ships crossed the Isthmus nearly four centuries before the completion of the canal. About 1521 Gil Gonzales was sent to the New World to seek out a strait through the Isthmus. He sailed up and down the Central American coast, entering this river and that, but failing of course to find a natural waterway. Not to be outdone, he decided to take his two caravels to pieces and to transport them across the Isthmus. He carried them on the backs of Indians and mules from the head of navigation on the Chagres River to the ancient city of Panama. There he rebuilt them and set out to sea, but they were lost in a storm. Still determined to make the most of his opportunities, Gonzales built others to take their places and with these made his way up the Pacific coast through the Gulf of Fonseca to Nicaragua, where he discovered Lake Nicaragua. A few years later another explorer made a trip across Lake Nicaragua and down the San Juan River to the Atlantic.

Cortez, the conquistador of Mexico, at one time was ordered to use every resource at his command in a search for the longed-for strait. He did not find it, but he did open up a line of communication across the Isthmus of Tehauntepec, following practically the same line as was afterwards followed by Eads with his proposed ship railway.

From those days to the time when the United States decided that the canal should be built at Panama and that it should be made a national undertaking, one route after another was proposed. In 1886, immediately after the French failure, the Senate requested the Secretary of the Navy to furnish all available information pertaining to the subject of a canal across the Isthmus, and Admiral Charles H. Davis reported that 19 canal and 7 railway projects had been proposed, the most northerly across the Isthmus of Tehauntepec and the most southerly across the Isthmus of Panama at the Gulf of Darien, 1,400 miles apart. Eight of these projects were located in Nicaragua.

In 1838 the Republic of New Granada, which then had territorial possession of the Isthmus of Panama, granted a concession to a French company to build a canal across the Isthmus. This company claimed to have found a pass through the mountains only 37 feet above sea level. In 1843 the French minister of foreign affairs instructed Napoleon Carella to investigate these claims. That engineer found no such pass and reported the claims to be worthless. He, in turn, advocated a canal along the route followed by the present Panama Canal, with a 3-mile tunnel through Culebra Mountain and with 18 locks on the Atlantic slope and 16 locks on the Pacific slope. He estimated the cost of such a canal at $25,000,000. The first formal surveys of the Panama route were made in 1827 by J. A. Lloyd. He recommended a combination rail and water route, with a canal on the Atlantic side and a railroad on the Pacific side.

The first serious proposition to build a Nicaragua Canal was made in 1779 when the King of England ordered an investigation into the feasibility of connecting the Nicaraguan lakes with the sea. A year later Capt. Horatio Nelson, destined to become the hero of Trafalgar, headed an expedition from Jamaica to possess the Nicaraguan lakes, which he considered to be the inland Gibraltar of Spanish America, commanding the only water pass between the oceans. His expedition was successful as far as overcoming Spanish opposition was concerned, but a deadlier enemy than the Don decimated his ranks. Of the 200 who set out with Nelson only 10 survived, and Nelson himself narrowly escaped with his life after a long illness.

In 1825 what now constitute the several countries of Central America were embraced in one federation—the Central American Republic. It asked the cooperation of the American people in the construction of a canal through Nicaragua. Henry Clay, then Secretary of State, favored the proposition, and, in 1826, the Federation entered into a contract with Aaron H. Palmer, of New York, for the construction of a canal through Nicaragua capable of accommodating the largest vessels afloat. Palmer was unable to command the necessary capital and the concession lapsed. A few years later an English corporation sent John Bailey to Nicaragua for the purpose of securing a canal concession. He failed to get the concession but was later employed by the Nicaraguan Government, which again had become independent, to determine the most feasible location for a canal across Nicaragua.

The United States Government became deeply interested in Isthmian Canal projects during the Forties of the last century. The extension of the national domain to the Pacific coast made the building of an Isthmian Canal a consideration of prime importance to the United States, and made it a dangerous policy to allow any other country to acquire a dominating hand over an Isthmian waterway. The result was that the American Government advised the British Government that it would not tolerate the control of any Isthmian Canal by any foreign power. This later brought about the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, which made neutral the proposed Nicaraguan Canal.

In 1849 Elijah Hise, representing the United States, negotiated a treaty with Nicaragua, by the terms of which that country gave to the United States, or its citizens, exclusive right to construct and operate roads, railways, canals, or any other medium of transportation across its territory between the two oceans. The consideration exacted by Nicaragua was that the United States should guarantee the independence of that country—a consideration that was then paramount because of the effort being made by Great Britain to gobble up the "Mosquito Coast" as far east as the San Juan River. The United States was not ready to give such a guarantee—although a half century later it did give it to the Republic of Panama—and the Hise treaty failed of ratification in the Senate.

A little later Cornelius Vanderbilt became interested in a canal and road across Nicaragua under an exclusive concession running for 85 years. Modifications of this concession permitted the Vanderbilt Company to exercise exclusive navigation rights on the lakes of Nicaragua. As a result the Accessory Transit Company established a transportation line from the Atlantic through the San Juan River and across Lake Nicaragua, thence by stage coach over a 13-mile stretch of road to San Juan del Sur on the Pacific.

In 1852 Col. Orville Childs made a report to President Fillmore upon the results of his surveys for a Nicaraguan Canal; and, if the United States, in 1902, had elected to build the Nicaraguan Canal, the route laid out by Childs would have been followed for all but a few miles of the entire distance. In 1858 a French citizen obtained from Nicaragua and Costa Rica a joint concession for a canal, which contained a provision that the French Government should have the right to keep two warships on Lake Nicaragua as long as the canal was in operation. The United States politely informed Nicaragua and Costa Rica that it would not permit any such agreement—that it would be a menace to the United States as long as the agreement was in force. Upon these representations the concession was canceled.

In 1876 the first Nicaraguan Canal Commission created by the American Congress made a unanimous report in favor of a canal across Nicaragua, after it had investigated all the proposed routes from eastern Mexico to western South America. It asserted that this route possessed, both for the construction and maintenance of the canal, greater advantages and fewer difficulties from engineering, commercial, and economic points of view than any one of the other routes shown to be practicable by surveys sufficient in detail to enable a judgment to be formed of their respective merits.

When the first French Panama Canal Company began its work all other projects fell by the wayside for the time being, just as all other plans for interoceanic canals were abandoned when the United States undertook the construction of the present canal. After that company failed, however, the Maritime Canal Company of Nicaragua was organized in 1889 by A. G. Menocal, under concessions from the Government of that country and Costa Rica. The Atlantic end of this canal, as proposed by the Maritime Canal Company, was located on the lagoon west of Greytown. The Pacific end was located at Brito, a few miles from San Juan del Sur. This canal company built three-fourths of a mile of canal, constructed a temporary railway and a short telegraph line, but soon thereafter became involved in financial difficulties which led to a suspension of operations. Even to this day the visitor to Nicaragua may see many evidences of the wrecked hopes of that period for whatever town he visits he finds there Americans and Europeans who went to Nicaragua at the time of the opening of the work of building a canal by the Maritime Canal Company. They expected to find a land of opportunity. But, with failure of the canal project, they found themselves in the possession of properties whose value lay only in staying there and operating them.

When the first Isthmian Canal Commission, in 1899, undertook to investigate all of the proposed routes across the connecting link between North and South America, it placed on the Nicaraguan route alone 20 working parties, made up of 159 civil engineers, their assistants, and 455 laborers. The entire work of exploring the Nicaraguan route was done with the greatest care. The depth of the canal, as adopted by the commission, was 35 feet and the minimum width 150 feet. The locks were to be 840 feet long and 84 feet wide, and of these there were to be eight on the Pacific and six on the Atlantic side. This canal was to be 184 miles long. At the Atlantic end there was to be a 46-mile sea-level section and at the Pacific end a 12-mile sea-level section, while the water in the middle 126-mile section was to be 145 feet above the water in the two oceans. It was estimated that it would cost $189,000,000 to build the Nicaraguan Canal.

Although the distance between the Atlantic and Pacific ports of the United States would have been more than 400 miles shorter by the Nicaragua Canal than by the Panama Canal, it would have taken about 24 hours longer to pass through the former than through the latter, so that, as far as length of time from Atlantic to Pacific ports was concerned, the two routes would have been practically on a par. The total amount of material it would have been necessary to excavate at Nicaragua approximates, according to the estimates, 228,000,000 cubic yards. This would have been increased, perhaps, by half, to make a canal large enough to accommodate ships such as will be accommodated by the present Panama Canal.

The three great trans-Isthmian projects may be said to have been: The Panama Canal, the Nicaraguan Canal, and the James B. Eads ship railway across the Isthmus of Tehauntepec. The latter proposition seems to be the most remarkable, in some ways, of them all. In 1881, James B. Eads, the great engineer who built the Mississippi River bridge at St. Louis, and whose work in jetty construction at the mouths of the Mississippi proved him to be one of the foremost engineers of his day, secured a charter from the Mexican Government conveying to him authority to utilize the Isthmus of Tehauntepec for the construction of a ship railway from the Atlantic to the Pacific. His plan called for a railway 134 miles long, with the highest point over 700 feet above the sea, and designed to carry vessels up to 7,000 tons. He calculated that the entire cost of the railway would not be more than $50,000,000. His plan was to build a railroad with a large number of tracks on which a huge cradle would run. This cradle would be placed under a ship, and the ship braced in the manner of one in dry dock. Heavy coiled springs were to equalize all stresses and to prevent shocks to the vessel. A number of powerful locomotives would be hitched to the cradle and would pull it across the Isthmus. Although the proposition was indorsed by many authorities, it seems to anyone who has crossed the Isthmus of Tehauntepec that it was a most visionary scheme.