Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1884-06-15
woRK on rHE PANAsfA CANAL.
Lazy Negroes and Undecided Engineers
do Not Hasten Matters
Boston Herald.
pa~4zra Nov - IT fs ar

the canal. One day. when at Colon. l
was watching some negroes at work on
! the construction Of building. One man
was fetching the bricks TO the bricklay-
ers. He had no bod, and how do you sup
/ pose he carried them! On q board, of
course, poised upon his Uranium. And
there were Just four bricks on his novel
I hOd-just four. As he had a considerable
distance to bring them from, it allowed
/ the bricklayer 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 stations for the customary
| ten minutes wait time is not money in
I this happy-gO-lucky country l had leis-
! ure to watch two negroes saw a short
board to nit il as a waShbOard TO the front
of a small shanty they were building for
| Esgin milP; and general stOre.o ] say
two negroes, for one Of them sat on the
board and held one end of it over nail
keg, while the other industrious mechanic
slowly sawed the end off. 1t was good
! five or six minutes operation, but that
was pretty lively work for this country.
| AS an elderly American remarked to me:
| ''NOw, there's a shanty that good North
ern carpenter would knock together all by
himself in half day, and I'll bet that
those niggers will spend week over the
job" l had occasion 10 pass by that same
station ten days later, and was rej0iced to
see that the two darRies had succeeded in
finishing the shanty.
One of the officers of the Pacific Mail
| Steamship Company at Colon told me
that whenever he or his assemblies have
/ any difficulty with the negroes in their
| employ and threaten to discharge them,
the latter invariably respond: "Oh! me
no care! Me 90 work for the canal COM
1 pany. Get 50 a day. Work five minutes,
den sit down an rest two hoursV
That expresses it exactly.
There appears to be good deal of indie
cision in the minds of the engineers en-
4 gagged in constructing 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 en-
/ gineers, chiefs Of sections, and others, l
have been unable to learn whether the
management intends to build the huge
| dam ("barsage") 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 ii by a new and artificial chan
mel to the Pacific. Noone doubts that this
/ can be done. but it would be very eXpen-
siYe for two reasons: First, it would be
virtually cutting a second canal, or two
I instead of one, as at present proposed;
second, the canal company would be
obliged to buy up immense tracts of land
/ (nOt included in their original concession
! from the Colombian Government from
private holders, and this at great expense.
/ Moreover, even should such an artificial
outlet for the Chagres river be dug, the
canal company would still be compelled
to build dam-though probably not of so
immense proportions and at such enor-
| nous expense as IN the former case-at
| Gamboa, for the reason that there are
nearly thirty mountain streams, which,
in time of treshets, as during the pro-
| lOnged rainy seasOn-during eight months
of each year-become huge torrents rush
ing down into the Chagres between the
point where the proposed artificial outlet
to the Pacific would he made and 1.-the
/ basin of the -ChagTes" at GambOa. 1t
would readily be seen by the least
technically informed reader that to divert
all these thirty floods 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 carrying away the entire canal at that
! point.
Already have land spectators begun
buying up real 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 contained in
| this vast reservoir formed by the damming
of the Chagres at Gamboa. One of the
COnsuls here informed me that some
| months ago he was puzzled by the fire.
| quent requests sf one ~ his clerks for a
! days leave of absence. Later on the Con-
sui learned that his man a negro native
| of this country was buying up farms in
! tho C1aY1hoa district from fbp natives in
order to sell them at 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 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 (ot the
| Suez canal) at Paris. But now a change
| has come Ger the spirit OF their dream,
apparently. For we find Mr.. Dingler,
the "Directeur-General DIES TravauX,"
saying 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 crea-
! ton of a maritime waterway across the
! Isthmus Of Panama have been left unde-
cided."
Most people are under the impression
! 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 question has
! shown that, though it would be possible to
! construct the canal under those condi-
! tions, there are fOrcible reasons for clos
| ing the canal with a lock chamber at the
1 aNrfropnifv Fvboro If will iOiu tho Pacific
| Ocean. 1t has been ascertained that the
| tides in the Atlantic and Pacific differ
| very materially. At Colon, on the Allan
| tic, 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
| sometimes 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 difference in the tides at Colon
| and Panama, all the abOYe-stateG facts
! have been well known for the past half
century. Fifty years ago Col. Lloyd, who
| ran line OF levels from sea 10 sea- lndue
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 sur
veys for Count de Lesseps some four years
or more ago. Since Col. Lloyd's survey,
the American engineers who laid the line
of the Panama Railroad must certainly
have rediscovered these facts in regard to
the levels of the Atlantic and Pacific
oceans. However that may be, the
present engineers of the canal company
have only very recently discovered that
they cannot make this an absolutely ''sea
level canal" That is a natural impossi-
| bility. They have greatly abused the
| confidence OF the public and the innocent
subscribers to the capital stock of the
''Interoceanic Canal Company" by prom
Using on open, unlocked ''sea leveP' ca
nal, at a certain (and comparatively
cheap cost, which promise served as a
basis to catch contributions tor the
shares.
social Equality.
Te1Gs SiftiRQs.
Some of the richest men in Austin
started in life in a modest way, and are
still plain unosteutatiOus people but