The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1914-06-25

next January when the official open
ing takes place.
AS ! looked upon this work Of man
| was impressed with the thought that
this was the end of a great effort. 1t
seemed to me that the great future to
which everybody was looking a not
the real keynote of the moment.
The completed task represented
more to me in thought than all the
glorious hopes of the future, for the
future, that the thing is possible
will take care of itself.
Here was not the glorious dawn of a
great commercial awakening but the
glorious end of a dream that has haunt
ed the fancy of white men ever since
Balboa first peeped over the dividing
line 400 years ago.
Ii is noticeable that while evidences
OF a prehistoric civilization abound
all through this country, from Central
America to Peru and that in some mat
tiers they were far advanced in the arts
and in civilization, the idea of connect
ing the two great oceans never occur.
red until the coming of the white man.
And with his advent Immediately
sprung the desire to cross. Balboa,
whose untiring perseverance always
arouses my admiration, never gave
himself rest until he had forced a pass
age. Not satisfied with this he took
three ships apart and forced the ma
tives at no one knows what sacrifice to
carry them over the isthmus where
he reassembled them and started a
merchant marine Of his own.
But Balboa was too progressive for
his time. Had he lived now he would
have made an excellent candidate for
the progressive party, but unfortun-
ately for him he arrived too soon. The
Spanish governor being more or less
of the stand pat persuasion grew jeal.
Gus of Balboa and SO had him hanged.
or course Balboa would have passed
out early in his career anyway as he
was of a temperament which forbade
longevity in those times, but / would
have liked to see him have his chance,
just to see what he would have made
of it.
But nevertheless as / looked down
into tho p,,ddy doptbo IF tho Dapo~a
Canal my mind went back over the
long list of attempts; Of hopes and
ambitions of one nation after another
and 1t vas a source of satisfaction to
me that the job was finally completed,
and that by the accident Of birth l
happened to belong to the nation
which put OF the finishing touches.
Another thing which | wish to put
down here at the outset. 1t is not such
a remarkable job of engineering as
people suppose. Given three hundred
million and suitable conditions and
any nation could build the canal. The
trouble previously has been this mat.
ter of conditions. Favorable condi-
tons simply did not exist. The climate,
the jungle, the perpetual rainfall, the
tropical fevers and plaques were more
formidable than the mountains. Given
a chance to work and 1t was only a
question of time and money when the
job would be done. But there was no
such chance. Before making the dirt
fly it was necessary to make it posi-
bic for men to live long enough to get
to the dirt.
This was the one feature of the case
which it took four hundred years to
understand. Instead of making condi.
tions possible for men to exist the pop,
ular mistake had been in attempting
to make men fit the conditions and
they died in the undertaking. The
French failed, nor did they realize the
cause of failure even when a death
list of six hundred out of every thous.
and stared them in the face. Why
back in 1898 the British government
sought to plant a colony on the 18th,
mus and they chose a band of Scotch.
men for the undertaking. No harder
race than the Scotch can be imagined,
but they could no more live there than
their native vegetation. 1t was for.
eign to their natures and they simply
died.
The only European race which seem.
ed to thrive in this climate without
molesting conditions was the Spaniard.
He could stand it and history fails to
mention that in the good old days he
entered a protest because he couldn't
get a with a bath. And to this
day, travellers in the interior Of South
America where the seed of these early
Spanish explorers has multiplied, re-
port the existence of filth unbelieve.
able, and yet the population seems to
thrive unhindered.
And SO say again that the biggest
thing about the building of this ditch
is not in the building but in making ii
possible to build. New York state has
spent already on it's barge canal and
good roads, enough to build the Pana'
ma Canal. New York City has ex
popdod IN how c,,bu,a,c onA %,hoc ,-d