The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-01-12
AN UGLY, UNHEALTHY CITY
graphic Description of Colon and it's Sur
roundIngs.
By MERRILL A. LEAGUE.
Special Correspondent of the Morning News.


colon. R. P. Dec. 24.-The Panama
,auroad must bear whatever blame
cbas to the fact that this little
;.,. figures upon the maps of the
ovid To the same cause is attrib-
...,hle the fact that Colon exists to-
5,y as one of the pestholes of the
nth Seldom, if ever, was the soul
,ss,,ess of corporations more glaring-
=. demonstrated than it is in the case
- This town of 5000 people, for
,.bich if it's existence must be endured,
.nsra can be wished no better fate
,n.n that it might be burned until not
-, mich as one rotten pile under a
.,rsIe rotten bungalow remained, and
maj it might then be rebuilt.
BEFORE the railroad enterprise was
,,ndertaken, more than half century
400 the mouth of the Chagres river,
,no,,t six miles to the westward of
Colon was the center of activity on
.Lis side of the isthmus. There was the
rtne town of Chagres, well known in
,be old ''forty-nine' days. 1t was at
rbaores that the journeyers toward
california began the perilous ascent
Of the river of that same name, pro-
ceadfng by boat as far as Cruces, an
t,lsnd village now practically non-eX-
f.tent and nearly forgotten, whence
+bav-or those of them so fortunate
IN escape Chagres fever during the
river trip-proceded by means of a
col1blestone road to Panama. That
road which once ran from Porto Bello,
si,taen miles east of Colon, through
cruces TO Panama, was a relic of the
"noom days" under the Spanish do
,rrion-days not heard of in any
,ractical way since the eighteenth
century,. 1t is now oyergroWn with
all of the tangled masses of this jun
Gle country, utterly impossible, and so
far forgotten that it is reliably said
that no living man could find his way
along it's route.
But Chagres was not the place for a
railroad terminal. The pernicious few
ers spread by the miasmatic mists that
rose every morning over the Chagres
river-mists still visible from Colon in
the early hours of the morning-made
life there too precarious. Besides, con-
sderations of engineering expediency
dictated the selection of this site as
the proper one for the railroad termi-
nal and so Colon came into existence.
The city is built upon what was orig
inally an island The railroad has de-
stroyed the narrow channel which once
separated this island from the main
land by a filing over which run the
tracks to Panama; but the theory of
the island still endures, and Colon
stands upon the western extremity of
what is known as the Isle de Manza-
nilla,
City in swamp.
So the photographers have it, but if
we would speak with absolute eX-
actitude we should say that Colon is
built upon the western extremity of a
swamp, for so it is in fact. Manzanilla
Island is a low-lying area of coral for
nation, the natural surface of which
is but eighteen inches above sea level
Upon this island-Colon covers a small
portion of it only-there grows all the
rang Vegetation characteristic of the
isthmus. Along the rocky beaches are
groves of cocoanut trees. Further in
shore where the porous nature of the
formation invites to perpetual damp
ness are to be found mango trees,
swamp grass and other wild and nox-
ious growths.
The city itself is divided very dis
tnctly into three sections-the railroad
quarter, the native quarter and Cristo-
bal Colon Point. The first and last of
these divisions are the only ones fit for
white man to inhabit, and even they
are loaded down with disadvantages
SO enormous as to outweigh all their
advantages. The railroad section lies
in the form of a crescent, stretching
from the northern line of Cristobal
Colon Point north and eastward along
the beach. The line dividing this sec