The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1907-04-03
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never used at all. For two hours the
| train tolls on and up until the low sum-
init of the continental divide is reached
| at Culebra and our train slides down
around the base of the great hill of An
| con and comes to a halt at the edge of
| old Panama. 1t has taken us two hours
I and half to make the journey but it
had required less than a tenth of that
time to demonstrate to us that the at
mosphere touching the Panama canal
was vastly different in Panama than it
had been in Washington. Indeed we
had hardly landed before we became
aware that the air was fairly saturated
with optimism touching every feature
of the great enterprise. 1t should be ex-
pected perhaps that the engineers, who
might be deceived because it is so easy
to make beautiful pictures of great wa
ter ways on map paper, should be
sanguine of success, and we tried to
make allowance for what they said to
us. But when we talked with the men
who are right down in the ditch, who
are directing the work that is done, who
know exactly how many blasts are fired
and how many steam shovels are at
work and how many dump cars are
loaded and emptied every day, when
men like these talked to US with their
eyes fairly shining with enthusiasm and
pride and confidence, we could not help
believing that they knew what they
were talking about and that they had
a foundation upon which to rest their
faith. We had more than half expected
to be met by gaunt, haggard, disheart-
ened men working because they had to
on an enterprise which they felt in their
hearts was foredoomed to fail. We
found instead alert, quick stepping,
quick speaking men, not in any degree
the difficulties of the
gigantic undert ia king upon which they
were engaged but proud for that very
reason of their connection with it and |
a bsolutely confident of its ultimate and
triumphant completion.
For four days we devoted ourselves
to the work of finding out or
trying to find out for ourselves the JUS |
and confidence which was so apparent |
and so all pervading. 1t would be ted |
ious to set down here the details of each |
days program. 1t is enough to say, in |
a general way, that we spent one day |
in the great cut at Culebra, where for |
nine miles there is to be an excavation, |
some of it through solid rock varying |
from 800 to 1,500 feet In width and from
30 to $50 feet in depth-involving the |
not counting work already |
done by the French, of $4,000 900 cubic
yards of material. Another day we
spent at Bas Obispo, really the outlet
Of the Culebra cut but where the rock
Is much harder and where less work
had been done by the French. Still an
other day was passed investigating the
site of the proposed Sosa dams at the
Pacific outlet of the canal and the place
where the locks are to be built by which
boats coming in from the Pacific are to
enter the canal on their journey to the
On the last day we investi-
gated the site of the proposed Gatun
1am a mountainous structure nearly
one and a half miles in length, half
mile wide at the bottom, one hundred
feet wide at the top and one hundred
and thirty-five feet high-the key to
the whole canal plan for upon it alone
depends the possibility of building
ock level canal. From each of these
trips we came back at night to the
great Tivoli hotel high up on the side of
Ancon Hill, more and more enthusiastic
and hopeful because more and more
that the work which has been
so well begun and which is progressing
1ow with such enormous strides cannot
fail of ultimate success. c. F. s.