Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1888-01-13
THE PANAMA CANAL.
Il RESIDENT LOCKER ON TALKS
OF THE SITUATION.

a RESIDENT LOCKER ON TALKS
OF THE SITUATION.
Millions of Dollars Thrown Away and |
Other Millions Lavish1y Squandered.
Funeral Ceremonies-At the Hospital.
Building a Dam-Co1on.
To the weary and seasck traveller no more |
enchanting scene can be viewed from tic
sea than the city Of Colon, with its surround
ings of tall palm trees waving in the breeze
1t seems like a glimpse of fairyland; but let |
the tourist once land and he is soon olsen i,
chanted. The air seems to be full OF pesti-
lence, and if Cologne is said to have had |
! s'seventy distinct stinks," am sure Colon |
has at the least three times as many. In fact |
it is a wonder that the inhabitants have not |
all of them turned up noses. The front street |
has a planl1ed over sidewalk under which the |
water stands and putrefies after rainfall
The back streets of the city are mud holes,
and green scum is their principal decora-
ton. The majority of the houses are built
upon sticks, with bed of steaming mud be-
meath to add to their sanitary advantages. |
Generally the Panama Railroad company
| run two funeral trains daily out to the GEM
etery at Monkey Hill, and carry lots of
''deadheads.n
| The funeral ceremonies are conducted on q
most economical plan. A poor man dies in
! the street. A box is brought and he is tum-
| bled into it and whirled away to the place Of
sculpture. On arrival the body is pitched
| into a hole When there are four OF five
| bodies in this hole it is closed up. The boxes
81, hoa
ther use. There is no hospital or aid for the
sick and destitute. For the sick man there is
no aid, for the dead no religious services. 1t
] is said that all are not dead who are thrown
| into these pits. This is immateral, of course,
| as they soon die after the red mud is shoveled
| in upon them. There are hospitals of course,
| in Colon, both American and French, the
latter under the auspices of the canal COM
| pany whose head is M. de Lesseps. | have
| personally given the French hospital trial
| of nearly year, and cannot recommend it
| as first class hotel Poor coffee and tough
| beef are not, in my estimation, the most
nourishing food for an invalid. These hos
| pitfalls are under the control of my distin-
! guished friend, NJ. de Lesseps, but he never
| boards at them when he chances to be Ill
Colon. The Sisters of Charity-noble women
| and a staff of some educated doctors OF
| French extraction have the management OF
affairs. The principal medicines used are
compound cathartic pills and quinine, varied
occasionally by fly blister or an enema.
| This treatment is an eminently successful
one, as is evidenced by the collins going out
every day. In the hospitals, as in everything
else, the French have the preference, except
in graveyard privileges. They get chicken,
etc., when an American OF Englisbman is
| given tough beef-the meat cut out between
the horns of bullocks whose ancestry dates
back beyond the reign of William the Con-
queror, who himself is old enough TO be lis
own grandfather.
| LENGTH WHEN COMPLETED
| The Panama canal, or rather 1.-THE Inter
oceanique,' will be, when completed, about
| fifty-five miles long. So far about eighteen
miles have been dredged out on the Chagres,
| and a portion of the mountain at Culebra has
| been blasted out. This is all the work of con-
tractors, not of the French. The American
Dredging company have done their work
nobly, while the French dredges have lain
idle and rusted along the shores of the
| Chagres. The chief aim OF a French employee
| seems to be to drink absinthe, cognac and
claret, and wear a cork hat and top boots
They are extremely clannish, and view Amer
leans as an inferior race of animals. The
canal company purpose building dam
] across between two mountains near Gamboa.
This they calculate will give them lake of
some marvellous capacity, so if the Atlantic
and Pacific oceans ever dry up they can turn
on a faucet and fill the canal without soiling
their kid gloves. This is all very fine in the
DRY de Lesseps), but the Chagres river rises
sometimes twenty-seyen feet in twenty-four
hours, and should it take a notion to do so
| after this mythical lake is completed it would
| soon show that Gamboa was not worth a dam.
| Noprofanity intended. NJ. de Lesseps is an i'm
| aginative man; he is man of @reat ideas
| but he did rot "look before he Ieaped. Jt.4ss,E
ing by present prospects the canal may be
completed by the year 1916, when the second
centennial of this grand republic will be cele-
brated. Surprising, for example only, that
the canal could be completed by the French
company in ten years, an investor in its
bonds would be a centenarian before he re-
ceived a decent return on his investment, pro-
! vided he was 81 years Of age today. By
cooking up favorable reports on gas stove
the French management have bagged mil
lions of dollars, but the game is nearly
| played out.
NJ de Lesseps has built town on a negro
graveyard at Colon, which he calls Cristoval
Colon He has taken possession of the bronze
statue Of Christopher Columbus, which was
presented by Empress Eugene, of France, to
| Colon itself as being one of the first places
visited in the new world by the great dis
| coverer. This he has erected in front of his
palace facing seward, SO as to welcome him
| when he sees fit to cross the waters. Here
| at Christoyal Colon, are collected his faith
| full satellites. Most of them are like the
lilies as they grow ''they neither toll, nor do
they spin," yet they use up lots of brandy
vermouth and gin. As an old resident on
the Isthmus of Panama, and locker on at
all the doings of the SO called canal company,
l do not hesitate to stigmatize the thing it
self, so far, as deceit and a snare. Doubt
less the company hope to complete the canal
at some future day by aid of the "rainy
seasons but that will take some centuries
What is required is cool American brains
American energy, American capital and the
thing will be success, a thing of today, not
as it promises now, to be regarded in years
to come as a failure and fossil enterprise
Colon Cor. New Orleans Times-Demoerat
One on the Hoosier schoolmaster.
@. A. Stevens relates In The Los Angeles
Tribune that some years ago he met Rev. DR..
Edward Eggleston in Switzerland, and went
with him to a diligence bureau to secure him
place to ChamouniX. II acted says Mr..
Stevens, ''as interpreter, and noticed the
clerk looking with awe at DR.. Eggleston's
tall form, long hair, sombrero and novel cut
of clothes, for he affected the western air
then. What is that man there, an Ameri-
can. the clerk asked me in French 'Yes,'
answered. He hesitated minute and con-
tinued, looking again at the hair and hat, is
it that he is a savageF Savage! not at ALL
Il beg 10000 pardons, but it to me occurred
that ba iC nv all hazard an Indian iAhl NOT