The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-01-20

upon every hand until it may be said
that there was not a tool brought to
the isthmus nor a yard of work done
along the canal route that represented
entire honesty.
At the northern end of the water
way the evidence of stealing obegins
at Cristobal Colon point. TO build
breakwater to protect the entrance of
the canal the French built a small
paradise-1,000 feet out into Limon bay
and several hundred feet wide. Money
was laivshed there with appalling
recklessness. Instead of building this
breakwater with cribs, mats and rim
rap, as is commonly done, the French
used stone cubes three feet on either
face. Instead of going to the great
stone stretches about Bohio easily ac-
Cessible from the railroad and opening
quarries for stone, the French award
ed contracts for its manufacture out
of concrete, and the price paid for
each block was SIS (silver), equivalent
to about $50 American gold Upon
such a foundation, constructed at A
cost many times in excess of what
would have been required for a sim
pie breakwater, honestly built the
French made a park, providing wa
terworks, drainage, sewerage and all
modern conVenienceS; planted cocoa
nut trees, and carried enormous GUAM
titles of sand to provide a pleasinglv
smooth surface for it all
superfiuOus Mansions.
And the park made the French COM
pany cover it with beautiful bunga-
lows, some large, some small. There
was a comfortable house for the Co
Ion offices; there We're architectural
models for the administrative staff:
| there was excellent stabing for the
horses which the company maintained
for the pleasure of its officials
| but lar more eXtraVagant than these
things were the two buildings erected
on the extremity of the point, one for
a residence for De LeSseps and the
other as a residence for Charles De
Lesseps, son of the engineer, who
seems to have had his finger in all the
! raScallty that rioted over the iSthmus,
| and for such of the directors in the
French company as might elect to visit
| the actual work. These buildings.
elaborate bungalows, built on the Eng
lish stucco style, were especially de-
signed and contracted for at exorbi-
tant prices. All of the interior wood
work in them is done in the most ex-
! penSive and rarest woods, hand-carv-
ed and turned into beautiful decora-
tions. The furniture for both houses
was especially made in Europe, and
for sumptuousness it would compare
| favorably with the contents of Old
! World palaces.
In both houses there are, too, i'm
mense quantities of specially design
| ed and decorated silver, in sets and
| services; cut glass and china of al
| most priceless worth-all paid for out
| of the money credulous France sub
| scribed for the building of canal.
/ Criminal oc o1.iu
for this small paradise and these mag
nificent palaces, the enormity of it all
is heightened by the fact that to-day
| through neglect, the Point is decayed
and rotter, the houses given over to
mongrel-breed squatters, while the
| two palaces, now occupied, were never
used except for one week in the lat
! ter eighties when De Lesseps came to
! the iethmus and perpetrated the farce
: of opening the canal to navi9a ION.
Wrong Gauge LOGON
In the excavated portions d.
level sections there is visible p.eO5 OF
this same mad work of the grafters, for
from Colon to Bohio, and from La Boca
to the end of the excavation the muddy
water of the filed-in ditch flows
through rows of superfluous machin-
cry. At La Boca alone, where the
dredging was never extended inland
more than three miles there lie rotting
in the mud scores of dredges, steam,
self-propelling dumping scoWs,
launches, etc.-a fleet so large as to
have made effective work impossible
through the interference OF the ma
chimes. And from reliable per
sons, who were IN the
know at the time, have 1t
! that downright thievery was
practiced on the most glazing of all
| the available proofs of French rascal
| itv. Living in the mud, soft silt and
swamps. are fifty Belgian locomotives,
! built especially to the order OF the Fan
! anna Canal Company, and in their day
as perfect pieces of machinery as Eu-
rope had ever produced. From some OF
| these locomotives the Partial cratlng
was never removed, for 1t was dlscoV-
! cred after they were delivered here
! that "a mistake" had been made in or
dering them. They were all ordered for
n different gauge railroad from that
on the isthmus and were, therefore,
entirely useless. But instead OF belng
sent hack to Europe to be sold where
they might be used, they were dumped
in the mud and there they lie To-Day:
The crime of those locomotives is
rivaled for downright rascallty by an
other which protrudes its proof all over
the isthmus. Of the whole canal work,
twenty-seven miles were, by the nature
of the land, from the very beginning OF
the enterprise required to be excaVated
from the surface, the other twenty-five
miles being under water dredging. The
French proceede, however, IN their
greed for contract commissions, with
the idea of dredging practically the en-
tire route. Their scheme was TO eXca-
vate from the surface until ditch of
sufficient depth to float dredge should
be secured, then to pump water into the
ditch and turn dredges loose on the
work.
Dredging is vastly more costly than
surface excavation, yet the French en-
tertained this monstrous idea, evidence
of which is found in the high ground
of the interior jungles. There, by the
side of the ditch, sticking through the
tangle of vegetation at short distances,
lie the hulls and machinery of dredges
it was proposed to put together and
launch into the ditch after it should
have been filled. There is not one of
these machines but countless numbers
of them, with hulls, boilers, scoops and
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