Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1904-01-12

Bearings and running-gear have been
protected with white lead. Camp EN-
had been white-leaded twelve years
ago works perfectly. Yet the other
sections of the machinery have much
deteriorated, and one doubts II much
Of it will be worth restoration. 1t
should be more profitable to import
latest models for the great dredging:
machines with bigger shovels and
larger capacities. De Lesseps, after
floating his stock, had to hasten to
show results; and the Paris weeklies
had photographs Of excavations and
machinery in action within a year.
There need be no such wasteful hurry
this time.
Present Digging In the Cut.
The immensity Of the Culebra cut
ting becomes real to the understanding
only by going through it. 1t is a noun
tain cleft in two. Half dozen differ
ent construction railroads are built
within the cleft at different elevations,
separate contractors working upon
different levels or terraces. Eight
hundred men are busy there at this
moment, but their 1000 cubic metres a
month makes but slow impression.
The idea Of the present company has
been merely to continue to some ex-
|
stands that the Panama railroads net
earnings are mostly put out now In
this way, instead Of in per cent divi-
dends. OF course the sale Of the road
at $7,000,000 will more than make this
worth while. Most Of the cars in the
cut are considered serviceable; but
the locomotives are light and old-fash.
has been protected, the boilers are no
longer to be trusted. Bushes grow
between the driving wheels; vines en-
circle the piston as II 1t never was
meant to be anything but a trellis;
and the whole machine reminds you OF
those floats used in Saratoga fetes,
clogged and smothered In flowers.
Anyway, not steam but electricity
will be largely used when the Amert-
cans take hold. Two or three power
stations are expected to be sufficient
to supply force for traction, and for
digging and for lifting along most, pro-
badly all, Of the forty-six miles OF the
canal line. The easeway of that great
dam which Is to be constructed at
Bohio (seventy-flve feet above the bed
Of the Chagres river, and 1885 feet
long on its top) will furnish free pow
er. The treaty especially provides for
may come from territory outside the
canal strip. Fuel, pay OF locomotive
engineers and f1remen, many items OF
high cost to the French, may be elimi-
mated by the Americans. Much of the
digging and drilling, which was done
fifteen and seventeen years ago by
manual labor, is now to be done by
electricity and compressed air machin-
cry. It has been recommended that the
United States let the jobs In various
contracts, but the likelihood Is that one
large corporation will be formed, such
as that which built the New York sub
way, and that different parts Of the
undertaking will be sublet to subordi-
nate contracting firms, and by them, no
doubt, parcelled out to others.
Tho Canal Plan.
this. sea-Ievei waterway from the
Atlantic end fourteen miles inland to
Bohio, utilizing the Chagres river; at
Bohio the river will be damned to
make lake 81 feet above the sea, and
sells Of deepest draught will be lifted
by twin locks. There will be about
ltwenty-one miles Of plain sailing, then
over the submerged country, through
the Culebra divide to Pedro Miguel,
where locks will drop the ships fifty
four to sixty-five feet. One and third
miles beyond will be the last locks, at
Mirafiores; the drop there Of eighteen
to thirty feet will place the ship IN
water at sea level, with the Bay OF
Panama only some eight miles distant.
M. Bunau-Varilla has not been on
the isthmus for a long while. Indeed.
Of all the officers of the provisional
government, DR.. Amador alone was
acquainted with him; they plotted to-
gether at the Waldorf-Astoria In New
York last summer. So when M. Bunau-
Varilla writes that little or no dredg-
ing will be required to deepen the COM
pleted sections Of the canal at the
Pacific and Atlantic ends he writes
| from information not fresh. In both
sections we found, within q week that
six-oared row boat or small gas
oline launch would often go aground.
Instead Of carrying the silt out to sea,
as NJ Bunau-Varilla declares. the Cha
gres river at the Atlantic end, piles 1t
in bars upon the canal bed, and rains
and continent streams do the same for
the so-called completed part at the Pa
cific end. How to protect the Atlantic
end from this gradual filling in, ac-
cording to the Walker inquiry, Is one
of the serious studies to be carried for
ward in connection with controlling
the ChagTes river and Its powerful
floods.
There Is a multitude Of dredgers and
steams shovels idling and rusting and
decaying, white-leaded about their
bearings, but unprotected as to their
boiler tubes. Dense chaparral reaches
down from the shores and drops fruc-
tiferous seeds, and the very highest Ell.
bows Of the cranes and the frames OF
the shovels bear high Towering bushes,
| to which now and then cling green
orchids; desolation in the midst OF
profusion, the obsolete and the dead IN
proud human handiwork overrun by
the liveliest Of vegetation. When you
by the wilderness while operating these
machines there is something mocking
In it.
Fever, Beri-seri, Leprosy.
AS you leave your room at Colon in
| the early morning to take the one
shower bath on the isthmus, you can
see the fever mist" rising from the
Chagres. There Is that still to con-
tend with, harder for persons of white
skin and blood tempered by northern
airs than for the blacks from the In
dies-harder, even, for an unknown
reason, than for Europeans. But the
French have left excellent hospitals on
the verge of Ancon Hill, in Panama.
They are not equipped as we would
have them, but the plant Is there.
Army experience in Santiago and Ha-
vana have taught what the FTench
never knew about what Is here called
"Chagres fever" but which may be
ONLY Cuban fever, or malarial fever or
tropical fever, type Of typhoid. Even
yellow fever Is not considered a neces-
sary concomitant Of tropical life any
more.
Beri-beri, however, that insidious
trouble which takes power from the
muscles Of the legs, the same as In the
Philippines, is going to be dangerous.
Two men on the Panama war ship suf-
i for from, IL at this moment There Is q