The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1903-09-27
CREEPING JOHNNY
AND HIS CANAL
The Deadly Fog That Kills White
invaders of the Isthmus.
ssssssssssssssssssss
BY WINIFRED BLACK.

Whenever 1 hear people talking
about the Panama Canal and what it
fs going to do for the United States
If the United States builds i'll think
of a voyage 1 made to Panama once.
We left the gray city of San Fran
cisco standing on tiptoe in the mist, to
wave US good-by from her futtering
hilltops We sailed down, down, down
into the purple tropics. One night,
when we had been a week out from
San Francisco, we anchored in the
heard the parrots screaming in the
market-place before the dawn came
like glory out of the glimmering
East.
Another night we rocked in the
cradle of the Pacific and saw the red
eye of the Fuego, the Central Amer
Jean volcano, winking at US in the
moonlight. We slouched into queer lit
tie ports where the sea rolled mountain
high with a heavy, oily roll, as if it
were too lazy to break into surf, and
Were the natives came out in leaky
boats and sold US pineapples as Juicy
as the Indian River orange, and cheri-
moyas as cold as charity-though they
grew in the steaming sunshine.
We rolled along within plain sight of
the regulation geography mountains Of
Central America, mountains that rise
out of the level plains in such sharp
peaks that they look as if they had
been whitfield. We saw schools of fly
ing-fish in the lavender twilight and
the sailors went out in boats by day
light and caught a huge tortoise as
big as two men: and we watched the
great scarlet-fish swimming in the
transparent purple of the water while
we sat on deck and heard the Panama
passengers talk about the De Lesseps
Canal and what it had done for Pana-
ma.
They were strange people, the Pana-
ma passengers. There was one tall man
with faded eyes who had seen the
world and the folly of it, and who
lived in Panama "to get away" he
said. There was little fat man, with
a nervous twitch to his fingers, who
was living contract out there" he
said. There were two dark Soaniards,
who smoked all day and played a kind
of game with counters all night: and
there was Frenchman with a furtive
glance and a deprecatory manner.
They all spoke in strange, dull, far
away voices, like the voices you hear
in dream when the fever is rising,
and they cid not want to talk about
anything but Panama and the life
Ihthere and the Canal.
y The Canal seemed to dominate them
like some strange. sluggish god built
for them there in the heat, and the
moisture, and the idleness: and all
their talking-begin how they might
led back to the Canal and to the for
tunes that the Canal had made, and
to the men the Canal had killed.
"There are two dead men for every
tie in the railroad across the Isthmus,''
said the tall man. He spoke in his
strange, hollow, muffled voice. as if
he feared some evil thing would over
hear him and strike him down for
speaking.
But there were two hundred deaths
for every foot of the Canal. The earth
doesn't like to be disturbed down there.
l would not dig foot in my garden,
not for all the money De Lesseps ever
raised in France. Money is all right
but the man in the coffin doesn't have
much use for it. We tried to tell them
about what would happen if they kept
on digging, but the men at the head
of things just laughed and blew a cloud
of cigarette smoke-you know what a
Frenchman is-and the workmen lust
kept getting drunken. They paid 'em
s ten dollars a day for digging there.
The families had to have something
to bury a man with. And most men
who die down there want to be sent
home to be buried-white men, 1 mean,
of course. I'm a kind of Chinaman
that way myself; when my time comes
they are going to ship me up to Iowa.
l don't suppose 1t makes much differ
], ence, but the vines do grow so fast
4 down there they'd strange a man in
his coffin before the sun had set on his
g funerall"
People are always wondering what
De Lesseps and his crowd did with all
the money they raised" said the fat
Panama passenger with the twitching
hands. They'd know quick enough if
they ever tried to dig a ditch a foot
wide there. Why, the vines will fill
ulCA III the HlSTt, anu lHey ciuhCu oii
to the soil with their crooked fingers
Till you feel as if you were dragging
snake out of the ground when you trv
to clear 'em out. The digging is easy
enough-if you can stay alive to dig
but the keeping a thing dug, that's the
trouble. And the things those French
men did-well, it was scandal I've
often wondered if the folks back there
in France had any idea how their mon
ey was spent. Why, they built palaces
to live in, those Frenchmen! Most of
EN- didn't live to live in 'em, but they
Quilt 'em all the same. Palaces with
balconies and porches, and great stair
cases and fine gardens down there IN
Panama, They couldn't find the
ground to build a heavy house on, but
tnat didn't bother 'em any. They Just
sent down to the shore and hauled the
Dig machinery up-machinery for the
canal work that cost hundreds of thou
sands of dollars, and sunk it in the mud
10 make solid foundation for their
me houses. And if you said a word
they laughed and said there was plen-
" of money in France; they'd buy new
machinery when they wanted it. Ana