Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1900-05-04
THE HOPE OF COLON
lsthmian City Expects Panama Canal
to Be Completed.
COMMISSIONERS GOIaG OVER ROUTE
Work Done by the French Makes
but Poor Showing.
TRAFFIC NOW GOES BY RAIL
TRAFFIC NOW GOES BY RAIL
Special Correspondence Of The Evening Star.

special Correspondence OF The Evening Star.
| COLON, April II, 1900
When the mail steamer arrives here once
a week we get an idea that the United
states Is talking about Nicaraguan canal.
| 1t is only from the newspapers that Colon
knows anything about such a waterway.
But then the town is Jealous. 1t has rea-
son to be when 1t sees the sluggishly flow
ing stream that it calls the Panama canal
and realizes what it might have been but
for the chicanery that ruined its existence.
But, in all seriousness. the talk here is
all of the Panama canal. There is good
reason for 1t perhaps, for the isthmian
canal commission has been spending
much time examining the immense trench
that was to have been one of the worlds
greatest waterways that the people have
come to believe 1t possible that the United
States Is to come to the rescue to make
Colon and its canal all that the most opti-
mistic of them had hoped years ago.
Each morning the commissioners leave
their great villa on the hill, the house once
occupied by the protector Of the canal, the
unfortunate De Lesseps, journey down to
the railway station and go away on a spe-
cial train. The day is spent along the
canal, now here, now there, wherever it
seems that there is a disputed point. 1t is
this attention to detail that has made the
people here happy in the hope that better
days are coming for them. To be sure
there are parties to the SOUTH four or five
Of them, surveying as many routes as
might be adopted for canal work, but the
Colon resident puts no faith in any Of them.
The man who possesses little education
argues that all this labor in Nicaragua
and elsewhere has its purpose, but that the
ultimate decision Of the commission will
be in favor Of the Panama route.
COlOn's Pride in Her Canal.
1t is almost laughable, this pride Of the
Colon people in their jungle-grown canal
The entrance is imposing enough, but that
is the full extent of its greatness. The fact
Is impressed upon any one who goes up the
canal in boat 1t was only the other day
that party went up in the launch from
the U. S. s. Scorpion. 1t was trip among
ruins. the woeful wreck Of a vast enter
prise
Just out of sight Of the town were three
huge machine shops, with every door and
window boarded over, dismal reminder
OF the days when Colon gave promise OF
becoming a metropolis of trade. In front
Of these buildings We're nearly dozen
small tugboats, some in the water. some
drawn upon the bank. all of them evidently
out of repair. despite the heavy coat of
paint which has recently been given them,
perhaps to impress the isthman canal COM
mission that all is not yet decay.
AT this point, a quarter mile from the
entrance, the canal makes a turn at right
angles with itself and the wrecks of dredges
and scows are seen. These left behind
in a few minutes and then comes naught
but the slow, muddy stream which has been
dignfed by the name of "a canal The tropi-
cal growth along the banks is so dense that
progress seems quite impossible at times;
indeed, the machete is often used to cut
away some of the hanging vines that
bar the way. There Is nothing ahead or
behind save this jungle of great trees and
dense foliage. Here and there stands q
dredge just where 1t was abandoned when
the order came to stop work.
The launch draws about two feet and
though only about mile and half from
the entrance to this great highway between
the oceans, in which The greatest ships of
the world were intended to sail, the pro-
Deller Is stirring the soft black mud on the
bottom. The forest became more and more
dense, the open water less In width and
at two miles the launch had to be turned
back because there was not even two feet
OF water in the canal.
AT the Chagres river a small force was
found making some repairs, which could
be done more economically now than later
but this was the only sign of life in the two
miles that were at all navigable 1t is
just one indication of the immense under
taking that the completion of the canal will
be- for all the expensive dredging has in
reality amounted to nothing, since the
stream two miles from its mouth flows so
sluggishly that it cannot carry away the
effiuvia.