The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-01-11

copyrighted, 1914. by Frank G. Carpenter.
Tivoh Hotel. Ancon. Panama.
TAM writing this letter at the close of
a long days journey through the Pan
anna canal. / have Travelled over it
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and today
rode more than 95 miles in a steam launch
through the Culebra cut and. over the
windings of the channel in Lake Gatun.
Rear Admiral H. H Rousseau of the canal
commission furnished the launch. and he
was in command of the party, consisting
of Mr.. w. H. Mullins, the Costa Rican
manager of the United Fruit company,
the managing editor of one of the New
York dailies and several others. IT was
early In the morning when we started out
from Gamboa, and it was long after noon
when we ended our trip at the locks at
Gatun, having spent eight hours in
steaming in and out of the great channel
which, within a few months from now,
will be traversed by the steamers of the
united oceans.
have visited the canal again and
again in the several stages of its max
ing. I saw IT late in the nineties, when
the French were In charge, and again
= in 1906. when our first chief engineer,
Mr.. Wallace, was drawing the old
French machinery out of the jungle and
setting first steam shovels to work
ing, have been ON the ground several
times during the administration of Colonel
Goethals. when more than 10000 men
We're employed. and 1 have seen the
tv1,t 20
steam shovels, each of which does the
work of 500 men, gouging out the beds
of the ocean and lifting the rock from
the great cut through the Andes.
The work has been so great that it has
dwarfed all past undertakings. 1t has
changed the makers of the Pyramids TO
pygmies, and has made the great Chinese
wall seem no bigger than the rail fence
round your farm. But | shall not write
of the immensity of the construction.
That has been pictured again and again.
This letter deals with the canal at its
completion, when the evidences of the
labor and brains which have cost the
United States more than $500, 900, ,000 have
been largely buried by the waters of the
Chagres 1t deals with the great water
way as it looks now and much as it
will look for all time to come
All the pictures you have seen of the
canal have represented it as mighty
ditch through the mountains. 1T has
been ragged and rough, and has looked
though it We're gouged out over night
Now that the water is in, the canal seems
to be thousand years old. The Secretary
of War when he was here the other day
could not realize that the green sides of
Culebra had been made by steam SHOW
els. 1t seemed to him like a natural val
ley, and he said it looked to him like the
banks Of certain rivers in Maine. The
tropical vegetation has already covered
the sides of the cut. and in time every
bit of rock will be as green as the
mountains which slope back from the
canal. The vegetation now reaches al
most to the water, and there are vines
which hang down and bathe themselves
in the channel There are enormous
masses of green in Gatun lake, and the
Gatun dam is fast putting on a coat of
emerald green Within a few years the
canal will be lined by masses of tropical
vegetation from one end to the other. 1t
VIII be ike a great DoIdnlcHI gafuen, ana
will be the scenic canal of the world.
| have gone through the Suez canal.
1t is a ditch through the desert, with
ragged gray towns here and there Now
and then one sees a caravan of camels
moving along on the banks, and there are
sometimes mirages in the air overhead.
Otherwise. everything save the canal it
self is thirsty and dry. Here at Panama
everything is the greenest of green.
There are palm trees and fern trees, wild
bananas and all the plants of the jungle.
But let me take you with me on our
trip of today Our steam launch makes
about nine miles an hour, and we have
Fritz Marti as the pilot and guide. He un-
derstands Lake Gatun and the canal
from one end to the other. He is far bet
ter posted than the man who took the
first tug through the locks into the lake
and tried to cross to Culebra. This man
drifted about this way and that and
finally lost himself in the Trinidad river
from where he was brought back by an
exploring party into the channel. Marti
is one of the characters of the canal
zone. He was foreman of the biggest
dynamite gang, and at one time was
blown thirty feet into the air. When he
came down on the rocks 1t was thought
that all OF his bones had been broken.
He recovered, however, and is now re-
ceiving 800 month as the best pilot of
the canal commission.
We leave Gamboa and ride over the
spot where the dam was thrown down
when Lake Gatun was let into the cut.
We soon come to the slides and see the
dredges at work. In some parts of Guile
bra there has been considerable motion
during the past few weeks, and we see
fresh masses of clay and rock which