The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1907-04-03
PANAMA CANAL,
Congressman Scott Writes of
His Trip Abroad.
The Squalid Town OF Colon the
Landing Place.
RESORT OF 10000 SOULS
The Party Lost Little Time in
Getting to Panama.
Citizens There Enthused Over
Early Building of Canal.

lola. April 3.--The REGISTER contain:
the following letter from its editor
Congressman Charles F. Scott:
At sunrise on Tuesday morning, March
II, the coasts Of Parma were dimly dis
cernible and two hours later were were
within sight of Colon lying low and
lonesome on the shore of its shallow sea.
The .'fronded palms of the cocoanut
trees, were there though fringing its
streets and giving sort of dignity to
the squalid town, and back of it only
a little way the green hills began to lift
their heads, and those who had been
IN the tropics before forgot their lone
someness in the pleasant remembrance
of similar scenes.
At ten o'clock we were at the docks
where we found a committee consist
ing of Mr.. Jackson Smith, Col. w. c.
Gorgas, Mr.. w. G Bierd, Mr.. D. w.
Bolick, Mr.. Hermon Shanklin and Mr..
William Gerig-of all of whom much
more hereafter-waiting to receive us.
The greatest good to the greatest num-
Der in the shortest time. has been the
rule in the sanitation of the isthmus,
and applying this rule Panama, with
nearly thirty thousand people, was lift
ed up out of the mud and made habita-
BILE for white men before work was be-
gun on Colon where there are only ten
thousand people. Built originally with
incredible disregard to the laws of
health on salt marsh so little above
the level of the sea that the sluggish
tides ebb and flow through its drainage
cutters, Colon will need in effect to
have a foundation put under it before
It can be made even half way fit for
men to live in. This work is beginning
but it is proceeding slowly and the
town, therefore is about as dirty and i'll
smelling and generally unattractfVe as
can possibly be imagined. 1t has no
decent hotels, moreover and so nobody
stops there longer than it takes him to
get away. OF course this does not ap-
ply to Christobal, the new section of
the city where the canal employees hVe
and where there are shops and offices
for the ground is higher there and those
who have tried both places say that
they find it really pleasanter than at
Panama.
Transient visitors for a long time.
however, if not for all time. will get to
Panama as soon as they can We were
glad, therefore, to fpd a special train
awaiting us and soon after landing we
were on our way past Monkey HIP
where unnamed and uncounted thou
sands of those who died during the
French regime are buried. but the name
Of which, so sardonically inappropriate
to a burying ground, has been changed
to Mt. Hope, a change as sfgnlncant per-
haps of the difference between French
and American spiritual attitude as 1t
may possibly be of the difference in the
method and aspirations with which we
have undertaken a great enterprise
which the French abandoned-past
scores of other little stations whose
names would signify nothing; and on
into the jungle, which looks for all the
world as If our railroad were running
Through a hcthouse all the way. Re
fninders of the old days are nearly al
WAYS in view in the shape of abandon
ed. rusting, rotting machinery which
cost the French stockholders millions of
dollars and the great bulk of which was