Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1906-08-14
FUN ON THE lSTHMUS.
What Engineers on the Panama
Canal Have Been Up Against.

What Engineers on the Panama
Canal Have Been Up Against.
The first detail-Mr. Ehle's party
established their headquarters at Bas
Obispo and started to tunnel line up
the Chagres valley into the Chilibre
drainage, says Fullerton L. Waldo in
the Engineering Magazine. 1t was not
possible to advance a foot without
hacking ones way through a tangle OF
creepers by means of the machete. LIZ
ards and gaudy snakes crawled and
scuttled everywhere. Buzzards lowered
against the blazing tropic sun, mon
keys jabbered from the trees and par
rots screamed, and insect pests were
superintendent about the heads and
eyes of. the lightly clad transitmen and
levelmen.
Amid the profusion of red and yell
low orchids and parasitical air plants,
hummingbrds hung and darted, while
the ground was alive with leaf cut
ter ants that climbed the trees and cut
out triangular bits of leaves, which
they carried away in regularly mar
shaled columns to grow the fungus on
which they feed their Larvae. Here and
there one came upon the footprints or
the tapir (''mountain cow or the
small tropical deer. A species of grouse
and a kind of wild turkey, with jet
black plumage and ruff, allied to the
Australian cassowary, furnished an oc-
casional welcome variety in the camp
| fire. Once in a while monkey was
cooked and eaten, but the appearance of
| the skinned animal was so suggest vely
human that few of the college-bred men
| from the North fancied the diet.
The gayest of butterflies and moths
some of them bright hue-lent addi-
tional grace notes of Pickering color.
| But, to tell the truth, it was sometimes
hard to appreciate the beauties of ma
ture in the facilitating tropical heat
| and humidity, and the plague of insects
was almost uncomfortable. Hundreds Of
ticks and red bugs, brushed from every
| leaf, attached themselves to the skin
and produced fostering sores. AT night
| the naen scratched themselves till they
| fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, and
then went on scratching with involun-
| tary galvanic motions. Chigoes Gig
| gerS''), kind of flea, laid eggs under
ones toenails; in time white sac with
black specks appeared, which broke up
| on the maturity of the embryonic fieas
and itched intolerably. The roncho a
| parasite of the ringworm class, came
with the friction of rain-soaked gar
ments, and spread in forms like minute
crocus blossoms all over the body. In
dolent ulcers, induced by poisoned
scratches, had to be burnt out with lu-
mar caustic, which meant, of course,
| lifelong scars
Neither last not least of the malig-
nant insect parasites was the gussanc,
which when first ensconced looks like q
bad boil; if left to mature worm an
inch long is produced, which grows with
its head inward (like the intestinal
parasites of the hog) and breathes
through its tail. 1t is easy enough for
| the stay-at-homes and cabinet survey
ors'' to belittle the effect of such things
on the man in the field; the fact re-
mains that bad water and bad air and
the resultant service conditions of de-
moralization have been the real causes
of failure hitherto at Panama.