The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-08-18

lantic to the Pacific in the shape of
decaying relics of an earlier engineer
ing period. There is no richer digging
in the ruins of an ancient Rome or
Pompeii than along the deserted route
of the canal. For upward of a quar-
ter of a century some 500, 000 900 worth
of decaying machinery buildings and
engineering implements have been bur-
led in the moist soil. In nothing was
the early French company more OK
travagant than in purchasing supplies
for the isthmus. These included near
ly everything that man could think of,
and the shipments of the goods to the
isthmus kept employed a small fleet of
large and small ships. Every steamer
that touched the isthmus in those
palmy days of canal digging unload
ed stacks of supplies for the engineers
and their subordinates.
There was machinery by the scores
and thousands of tons, large, small and
medium size; costly machinery and an
tiquated types of no real value at all;
machinery that was to be used, and
machinery intended for waste; machin-
cry that was as much out of place in
that faraway corner of the earth as
steam radiators in the desert of Sa-
hara. Why this endless amount of ma
chinery was shipped there, no one
could explain; but it was all accepted,
paid for, and then left to rot in the
hot, moist climate. There were loco
motives from Belgium and the United
States, enormous steam hammers from
England, great turning lathes from
Germany, scoops, buckets, steel rails,
and machine tools by the acre from all
parts of the earth.
There were no storehouses sufficient
to hold all these supplies. There are
2,431 buildings on the isthmus left by
the old Panama Company, many of
which are hospital buildings and exec
utive offices. but not all of these could
store the machinery sent down to help
dig the canal. What wonder, then,
that machinery became ordinary arti-
cles of common use? Engineers and
contractors stored what they could, and
turned the rest out of doors to the tend
er mercy of a climate that quickly de-
stroys steel and iron.
There were some who used the iron
as foundations for their costly homes.
Along the line of the canal the silt
of the soil is often as soft and slip
perry as quicksand. 1t filters through
and into everything. II made the
building of the canal a difficult en-
cheering problem for the French,
which they could never quite over
come. When you build substantial
houses OF stone or iron upon the run
ming soil there is no surety that the
foundations will last. Some of the
large houses built by the French Off
GERS of the company sank down into
the silly soil, until to-day only the
upper stories are visible. So. to make
their homes more secure, some of them
used the surplus machinery as foun-
dations. There are houses on the 18TH
mus that stand on $4,000 worth OF
machinery, which was never used for
the purpose intended.
In many similar ways the surplus
machinery was employed TO keep II
from standing idle. In parts of the
isthmus VI is found buried ten and fif-
teen feet below the surface soil. I'm
earth II, and YOU md It as soft and
porous as cheese. II may be a huge
iron anchor. a steel bucket. or a cast
iron scoop, that protrudes above the
soil to attract the attention. With a
penkntfe u can be cut and pared as
easily az II II were an apple. In some
mysterious way the soil and climate
has disintegrated the metal 80 that
lie hardness has disappeared. and
while retaining all OF rs outline and
outward characteristics, IL IL no long
or iron or steel one wauders along
the line Of the canal 20 pick up odd
pieces % relics. only 10 md them
crumhling under the touch
Not All the machinery. however. has
been cast aside 10 sink into the loose
soil 81 the canal A. Colon and Em-
perador u u scattered over miies OF