Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-02-01

hole, never half completed, and which is
rapidly caying in at the sides and filling
up the cuts already made. The confidence
of the French people has received too rude
a shock to be ever restored; but even if a
new company could be formed tomorrow,
with unlimited capital at command, it is
doubtful if they could take the gigantic
failure as it stands to-day and bring it to
a successful completion before the Amer
lean canal, across Nicaragua, will be fin
ished.
During the six months wet season the
rainfall hereabouts averages ten feet; and
in single shower six inches OF water fire.
quently falls; the Chagres river having the
uncomfortable range of depth of from two
feet to forty feet. All along the line of
the abandoned cuttings are hundreds of
mighty dredges and engines, mostly of
American make; thousands of cranes and
cars, ard large amount of railway rolling
stock, rusting and sinking deeper and
deeper into the mud. Such of the dredges,
cars, etc., as are not buried in the gravel
washed down upon them by the recent
rains, are Just now being dressed in brand
new coats of red and black paint, making
ready for the French Commissioners, who
are expected here soon to inspect the work
and report to the Government as to the ad-
visibility of forming a new company to
complete the project.
The death rate on this narrow neck of
land during the last ten years especially
among those employed along the canal
has been simply appalling; far worse, in
fact, as those who have survived declare
than the world was permitted to hear Of
The company's hospitals, containing a
thousand beds, were constantly filled; and
it must be remembered that only those
who were able to travel after they became
i'll, were sent there-not fraction of the
number who persisted miserably by the
wayside. Of the fifty-six Sisters of Charity
sent from France for service in these hos
pitfalls, twenty-three died. The number of
doctors needed in active employ was thirty;
and mortality among them averaged
eighty in FIVE years The tenure of life of
the doctor at Culebre, or SNAKE Cut" was
most uncertain; and four times in one
year death chose there a shining mark.
Even at San Pubic, the place of the resi-
dent physician was made vacant by death
i've times in as many years. During the
early days the contract northern physi-
clans were very unpopular; but later it
was covered that the yankee Raw-bones"
was harder to kill than French and Span
ish medicos, and impossible to scare in the
line of their duty.
In sober truth, the whole isthmus is one
vast graveyard, for besides the conseerated
Goods acres" are trenches filed to the
brim with moldering bones, and thousands
of isolated graves scattered all over the
tropic wilderness. And oh, the pity of it
Most of the victims were young men, hun
dreds fresh from college, full of high hopes
and eager ambitions, but with no thought
of finding on the first page Of youths
abright lexicon" that dread word, death.
In hundreds of homes the tears are not yet
dried for the brightest and best who sleep
in this beautiful wilderness; the pride OF
many mothers heart occupies an un-
marked grave, which none but God remem-
bers, where vegetation riots and serpents
glide and strange flowers blossom.
FANNIE B. WARD.