The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-06-12
WORK ON THE PANAMA CANAL.
Lazy Negroes and Undecided Engineers Do
Not Hasten Matters.

Lazy Negroes and Undecided Engineers Do
Not Hasten Matters.
Panama Letter in Boston Herald.
1t is an amusing sight for an American newly
arrived here to watch the Jamaica negroes at
work ON the canal. One day, when at Colon. L
was watching some negroes at work or the con-
struction of a building. One man was fetching
the bricks to the b~rieklayePs. He had no hod,
and how do you suppose he carried them! On a
board, of course, poised upon his Uranium And
there were Just four bricks or his novel hod-
Just four. As he had a considerable distance to
bring them from, itallowed the brick-layer plenty
of time to lay them carefully and be all ready
for the next supply when the hod-carrier arrived
with his second batch OF four bricks, and so on
ad lib.
The next day, coming down by rail from Colon
to Panama, as we stopped at one of the way sta
tons for the customary ten minutes wait time
is not money in this happy-golucky country |
had leisure to watch two negroes saw q short
board to fit it as a washboard to the front of a
small shanty they were building for a ''gin mill"
and general store" | say TWO negroes, for one
of them sat on the board and held one end of it
over a nail key, while the other industrious me-
chanic slowly sawed the end off. 1t was a good
| five or six minutes operation, but that was pretty
lively work for this country. As an elderly Amer
lean remarked to me: Now, there's a shanty
that a good Northern carpenter would knock to-
gether all by himself in half a day, and I'll bet
that those niggers will spend a week over the
JOos a AAStA OANetCAOa " Re1o W NA0u GuiitN Qua
ton ten days later. and was rejoiced to see that
the two darkies had succeeded in finishing the
shanty.
One of the officers of the Pacific Mail Steam
ship Company, at Colon, told me that whenever
he or his associates have any difficulty with the
negroes in their employ, and threaten to dis
charge them, the latter invariably respond:
ooh! mt no care! Me go work for the canal
company. Get 81 a day. Work five minutes,
den sit down an rest two hoursl"
That expresses it exactly.
There appears to be a good deal of indecision
in the minds of the engineers engaged in con
structing this canal as to what they are to do in
respect to certain great natural obstacles to the
successful completion of the canal. Thus, after
several conversations with chief engineers, chiefs
of sections. and others, | have been unable to
learn whether the management intends to build
the huge dam ('fbarsageO at Gamboa, as was
the original intention, or to divert the course Of
the river Chagres at some point south of the
Gamboa district, say at the head waters of the
Chagres in the mountains, and carry it by a new
and artificial channel to the Pacific. No one
doubts that this can be done, but it would
be very expensive, for two reasons: First, it
would be virtually cutting a second canal, or two
insted of one, as at present proposed; second,
the canal company would be obliged to buy ND
immense tracts of land mot included in their
original concession from the Colombian govern
ment) from private hoders, and this at great eX-
pense. Moreover, even should such an artificial
outlet for the Chagres river be dug, the canal
company would still be compelled to build a dam
though probably not of SO immense proper
tons and at such enormous expense as in the
former ease-at Gamboa, for the reason that
there are nearly thirty mountain streams,
which, in time of freshets, as during the pro
lonSed rainy season-during eight months of
each year-become huge torrents running down
into the Chagres between the point where the
proposed artificial outlet to the Pacific would be
made and the basin of the Chagres7 at Gamboa.
1t would readily be seen by the least technically
informed reader that to divert all these thirty
foods either very many artificial outlets must be
dug, or else an exceedingly strong dam must be
built at Gamboa to restrain their accumulated
waters, and keep them from inundating and car
rying away the entire canal at that point.
Already have land spectators begun buying
up read estate in the vicinity of Gamboa, the
outlying properties which will probably be
reached, flooded and rendered worthless to their
owners by the immense quantity of water contain
ed in this vast reservoir formed by the %damning
of the ChagreS at Gamboa. One OF the consulS
here informed me that some months ago he was
puzzled by the frequent requests of one of his
clerks for a days leave of absence. Later on
the consul learned that his man la negro native
of this country was buying upfarms in the Gam
boa district from the natives, in order to sell them
at a big advance to the canal company. Again,
the engineers are all at sea upon the question
whether this shall be a canal open to the sea
without any locks, or whether it shall have a
lock at Panama, and, possibly, one at Colon.
The former was the original intention of Count
de Lesseps, as he himself told me one day last
spring in his Office (of the Suez canal) at Paris.
But now a change has come DER the spirit of
their dream. apparently. For we find Mr.. Ding
Ter, the general des Travaux," say
ing in his report presented last October to the
committee of administration at Paris, that
though the work of cutting the canal has
been commenced throughout almost the entire
length. yet several most important questions
concerning the creation of a maritime water
way across the Isthmus of Panama have been
left undecided"
hfact panpla ana rndar the innnpaCSiou that
the entrances to the Panama canal are to be
open to the sea without any locks or other
hindrances. This, indeed, may have been the
primitive intention of the originators of the
scheme, but a more thorough study of the ques-
ton has shown that, though it would be posi-
Bile to construct the canal under those con-
ditions, there are foicible reasons for closing
the canal with a lock chamber at the ex-
remity where it will join the Pacific ocean. 1t
has been ascertained that the tides in the At
lantic and Pacific differ very materially. AT
Colon, on the Atlantic, the difference between
high and low water mark is not more than
ffty-eight centimetres, whereas, at Panama,
on the Pacific, the average variation in the
height OF the water is four metres, and is some
times not less than six. Moreover, high water
at Colon is about nine hours later than
at Panama. When the tide at Colon is half
way between high and low, it is low tide at
Panama. The maximum difference which could
exist between the level of the waters of the two
oceans would therefore be equal to half the
height to which the tide rises at Panama, on the
Pacific. AS regards the above mentioned differ
ence in the tides at Colon and Panama. all the
above-stated facts have been well known for the
past half a century. Fifty years ago Colonel
Lloyd, who ran a line of levels from sea to sea.
made known to the engineering world the above
facts, and they must have been known
or should have been known by the
French engineers who made the preliminary
surveys for Count de Lesseps some four years or
more ago. Since Colonel Lloyds survey the