Читать книгу The Boy Travellers in South America - Thomas Wallace Knox - Страница 10

"The idea of a waterway across the narrowest part of the American Continent, or, rather, of the isthmus connecting North and South America," said Dr. Bronson, "is almost as old as the discovery of the New World."

BALBOA TAKING POSSESSION OF THE PACIFIC.

"Quite right," replied their host. "In 1513, or twenty-one years after the discovery of America by Columbus, Vasco Nunez de Balboa, having taken possession of the Pacific Ocean, proposed making a passage through the rivers of Darien, but his death shortly afterwards caused the project to be dropped.

"Ten years afterwards, or in 1523, Fernando Cortez had conquered Mexico, and proposed a waterway through the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. He employed Gonzalo Sandoval to make a very careful survey of the route, and continued to urge his proposition after the Emperor Charles V. had removed the government of Mexico from his control. But the emperor was not favorably impressed with the scheme, which contemplated the expenditure of a vast amount of money, and, besides, he was more interested in obtaining a revenue from Mexico than in doing exactly the reverse. The proposal of Cortez was rejected as emphatically as was that of Balboa, but it is a remarkable circumstance that these two routes are the northern and southern extremes of the lines proposed for inter-oceanic canals.

"By reference to a book by a celebrated Portuguese navigator of the sixteenth century, Antonio Galvao, it appears that, up to the year 1550, four routes had been discovered and examined, though none of them had been surveyed with care. Galvao states in his book that a maritime canal can be cut in four different places: First, between the Gulf of Uraba and the Gulf of San Juan; second, through the Isthmus of Panama; third, along the San Juan River, and through Lake Nicaragua; and, fourth, through the Mexican Isthmus. Several explorers were sent to examine these routes, but they encountered many difficulties, and none of them brought back any exact information. So, you perceive, the principal routes for an inter-oceanic canal were known to the geographical world three hundred years ago."

There was a pause to enable Frank and Fred to examine the map which was spread before them, showing the routes which Mr. Colné had mentioned. When the examination was completed their entertainer continued:

"Very little attention was given to the subject for about two hundred years from the time I have mentioned. In the latter part of the eighteenth century the idea was revived again; England thought it would be of great value to her if she could obtain control of a passage from ocean to ocean, and in 1778 she sent an expedition against Nicaragua in order to obtain possession of the country. The enterprise was unsuccessful, and the commander, Lord Nelson, narrowly escaped with his life.

"In 1780 and '81 surveys were made of the Panama and Nicaragua routes, the former by order of King Charles III. of Spain, and the latter by Antonio de Bucareli, Viceroy of Mexico. These were the first technical surveys of the routes, all previous examinations having been made without the aid of engineering instruments, and unaccompanied by calculations as to the amount of earth to be removed, and the probable cost of the work.

"In 1804, Alexander Von Humboldt and Admiral Fitzroy, the former having made a personal examination of the Darien route, declared in its favor. This route has had many adherents, and a large amount of money has been expended in its examination. I will not weary you with the names of all the explorers and engineers who have examined the various Isthmus routes. The catalogue is a long one; many valuable lives have been sacrificed in this work, and the most of those who returned alive were able to present only unsatisfactory reports. The climate was fearfully unhealthy; the natives were either hostile to the enterprise or indifferent, and would rarely give assistance; and though the governments through whose territory the routes lay were generally well disposed, they could not always control their subjects."

"Probably the most thorough explorations," remarked Dr. Bronson, "were those ordered by the government of the United States in 1870. Several ships were fitted out, and the Darien, Nicaragua, Tehuantepec, and Panama routes were examined. Commodore Shufeldt went to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec; Commanders Hatfield and Lull went to Nicaragua, the latter visiting Panama, to complete the exploration of that route. Commander Selfridge and Lieutenant Collins examined the Darien route, and also some of the rivers entering the ocean a little farther to the north. The whole exploration occupied about three years, and the reports are very voluminous. They are more interesting to the engineer than to the general reader, and I did not bring them along as part of my baggage."

"I have read," said Fred, "about the expedition of Lieutenant Strain. Please tell us what route he examined."

RESCUE OF THE SURVIVORS OF STRAIN'S EXPEDITION.

"Strain's expedition was to survey the Darien route," replied the Doctor. "It ended disastrously, as the party lost its way, and also its instruments and provisions, and wandered for many days in a dense forest where the men were obliged to cut their path at nearly every step. More than half the party perished in the wilderness, and Lieutenant Strain died soon after his return to the United States.

STRAIN'S ARRIVAL AT THE COAST.

"The misfortunes of Strain's expedition were due in great measure to information which proved to have been almost entirely false. An English engineer, named Gisborne, had published a book containing a pretended survey of the country, which he claimed to have surveyed; in consequence of this report the governments of England, France, New Granada, and the United States of America sent expeditions, all of which failed disastrously. Strain's was the only one of the number that succeeded in crossing from ocean to ocean, the rest having turned back on account of the many unexpected difficulties, and the hostility of the Indians, who attacked them repeatedly. It turned out that Gisborne had never crossed the Isthmus, and his map of the Darien region was almost wholly imaginary.

"Several companies have been formed at different times," the Doctor continued, "for the construction of a canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but the most of them have existed only on paper. The first of these companies was based on Gisborne's imaginary surveys, and was organized in England, with a capital of seventy-five million dollars. Sir Charles Fox and other heavy capitalists were the promoters of this company, and they confidently expected to complete their work before the year 1860. The preliminary operations showed that the canal, if built at all, would cost several times that amount, and the enterprise was abandoned.

"Concessions have also been granted on other routes, but no serious work has been performed; the concessions were limited in the time of commencing and completing the work, and one after another the limit of time expired without anything having been accomplished. The Panama route is the only one on which there has been an attempt to make a canal; the government of the United States has made a treaty with Nicaragua for the construction of a canal through that country, but, up to the present time, the scheme has not gone beyond the surveys and the reports of the engineers."

"We are confident," said Mr. Colné, with a smile, "that our canal from Aspinwall to Panama will be completed, and that large ships will pass through it before the 1st of January, 1890. Indeed, some of our engineers promise it for the New Year of 1889. Thus far the work has progressed quite as fast as we expected at the outset, and if no unforeseen difficulties arise, we shall have the canal completed before 1890."

One of the youths asked how much the canal was likely to cost, and how it would compare with the Suez Canal, which they had visited on their return from the Far East.

"Not to trouble you with details," replied the Doctor, "the estimate of the cost was originally six hundred millions of francs, or one hundred and twenty millions of dollars. Very few enterprises come within the original estimates, and it is probable that not less than thirty millions of dollars, and perhaps another hundred millions, must be added to these figures, and some engineers say three hundred millions will be required. The cost of the Suez Canal was about one hundred millions, and the work at Suez was very light compared with that at Panama."

"I remember," said Fred, "that the Suez Canal is practically a great ditch through a sandy country, with no elevation of more than sixty feet, and but very little rock to be cut away. Nearly half the length of the canal was made by filling up depressions in the desert, which were turned into lakes by allowing the water to run into them. Is there anything of the kind here?"

"Not by any means," was the reply; "the Panama Canal is being cut through a region where the difficulties are enormous by comparison with those at Suez. Instead of a waste of sand, there is a tropical forest for the greater part of the way, and in place of the depressions which were converted into lakes to form part of the Suez Canal, we have a chain of hills which are nearly three hundred feet high at the lowest points. The summit level of the Panama Railway is two hundred and sixty-three feet above the level of tide-water on the Atlantic coast, and the canal must have the enormous depth of three hundred feet, and at some points more than that."

"That is quite correct," replied their host. "It will be the deepest canal cutting in the world when it is completed. On the section of Culebra, in a distance of little more than a mile, we must remove twenty-five million cubic metres of earth and pile it up elsewhere. Fortunately, our work is rendered easy in this respect, as there are many valleys close to the canal where the earth can be disposed of. Do you know how much is represented by twenty-five million cubic metres?"

Fred made a calculation on a slip of paper, roughly converting metres into yards by adding one fifth. Then he reduced the yards into cubic feet, and announced that, with the earth to be removed from the Culebra section of the canal they could build a wall nine feet thick and twenty feet high for a distance of twenty-eight miles, and have a good many car-loads to spare.

VIEW ON THE CHAGRES RIVER.

"This will give you an idea of the work to be performed here," replied Mr. Colné, "and you must remember that it is only one single section of the entire line. Then, too, there are great difficulties in the way on account of the rains, and the sudden overflows of the Chagres River, which crosses the line of the canal. Instead of being a depression to be filled with water, it is liable to pour out at any moment much more water than we want."

BEACH NEAR ASPINWALL.

"The average rainfall of this part of the Isthmus," said Dr. Bronson, "according to the official reports, is over twelve feet. This is not distributed through the year, but is confined to about seven months. During a single rain-storm six and a half inches of water have fallen.

"The consequence is that there are excessive floods in the rivers; the Chagres River, which you see represented on the map as crossing the canal, is, in the dry season, a stream about two hundred and fifty feet wide and two feet deep. During a heavy flood it is fifteen hundred feet wide, and over forty feet deep, and it has been known to rise thirty or forty feet in a few hours. In these floods it brings down trees, rocks, and earth, and sometimes houses, and the sides of hills. In one freshet, an iron tank, that stood seventeen feet above the railway track, was washed away, and on several occasions considerable portions of the road have been destroyed."

IN THE RAINY SEASON.

"We get over that difficulty," said Mr. Colné, "by making a barrage, or dam, across the river, and between two hills, to retain the waters during the freshets, and let them out gradually by lateral sluices. The capacity of the reservoir formed by the dam will be much more than enough to hold all the water coming down in the greatest rise that has ever been known since the railway was completed, in 1855. Mr. De Lesseps says that there are three reservoirs in the world of greater capacity than this: one is at St. Etienne, France; one at La Gillappe, Belgium; and one at Alicante, in Spain. They have stood for three centuries, and are as good and strong as they ever were. Science has improved since the great retaining walls of Alicante were erected, and the dam of the Chagres River will be perfectly safe, and do justice to the science which constructs it."

By this time the boat had reached the line of the breakwater which was being constructed to protect the harbor from the strong "northers" that sometimes blow at Aspinwall, and make anchorage unsafe. The earth dredged from the canal and from the shallow portions of the bay was partly used for forming the ground already mentioned, and partly for constructing the breakwater. For the latter purpose it was piled between walls of rock, and it was expected that the work would be completed long before the canal was ready for use.

A HAND-CAR JOURNEY ON THE PANAMA RAILWAY.

From the breakwater they were taken to the entrance of the channel opened by the dredges for the canal, and the location of the proposed new port was pointed out. Then they proceeded up the great ditch for two or three miles, and landed where the canal and railway were close together. Two hand-cars were standing on the track and evidently waiting for them. The gentleman to whom they had brought the letter was there, and also one of the officials of the railway. At the invitation of the latter, the party was soon distributed on the vehicles, three on one and three on the other. Comfortably seated on the front of the hand-cars, which were propelled by natives in very scanty dress, our friends rolled easily over the level track, in the direction of the high ground, and also of Panama.

Frank and Fred thought they had never taken a more delightful ride. The air was delicious; there was the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics all around them; birds were abundant in the trees; monkeys occasionally chattered above them, or swung from the limbs, as if inviting the strangers to stop and visit their relatives; the speed was just enough for comfort; their vision was unimpeded, and there was no locomotive in front of them to poison the air with fumes of burning coal or shower them with cinders. Then, too, their guide was a cyclopædia of knowledge, as he had been for a long time connected with the railway and was thoroughly conversant with its history.

SURVEYING UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

"It was one of the most difficult roads to build that I ever heard of," said he, "and three times the work was suspended on account of the impossibility of getting enough laborers or bringing forward the necessary material. Everything had to be brought from New York or some other American or European city, as there was no labor worth having to be found on the Isthmus itself. Between Aspinwall and Monkey Hill the engineers had sometimes to wade up to their waists while laying out the line, and after the road was completed the track repeatedly sank down out of sight. It happened several times that two or three hundred feet of road would thus disappear in a single night, and then the whole force of the road was put to work to fill up the cavities. There are some places that were filled two or three times before the road-bed was solid enough to stay. Since the canal company began operations here it has built some new tracks, and occasionally meets with the same trouble, but the old part of the line is all right now.

NATIVE VILLAGE ON THE ISTHMUS.

"There is a good story of how the natives of the country around Gatun had their first view of a locomotive. The track was completed to that point, and a day was set for running an engine over it. People came for long distances; they had heard wonderful stories of the witchcraft of the strangers, and there was great curiosity to know about it. There was an immense crowd, and at the appointed time the locomotive came in sight, puffing vigorously, and emitting clouds of steam and smoke. There was great excitement, which reached the pitch of terror when the creature came into the midst of the crowd, and the whistle was blown. The whole crowd fled to the river, and many of them jumped in, expecting they would be pursued, and possibly devoured.

NATIVE IDEA OF THE LOCOMOTIVE.

"Finding the monster did not follow them, they gathered courage and reassembled, but stood at a safe distance, ready to run again if necessary. They sent forward their priest to examine the animal; he surveyed it carefully, and then informed his followers that it was not an animal, but a machine, in which there was a veritable demon chained, and compelled to work the crank which propelled it. The explanation was sufficient; the good priest knew it was hopeless to attempt to enlighten them on the uses of steam, and found the demon story the shortest way out of the difficulty. It is just possible, though, that he was not versed in natural philosophy, and his explanation may have been the honest result of his observation."

At several points, as they passed along, Fred observed men cutting away the bushes by the roadside, and, in reply to a question, he learned that the growth of the tropical forest was so rapid that men were kept busy all along the route in keeping it down, so that it would not touch the passing trains. "But it is not without its advantages," said their informant; "what it costs to keep down the rapid vegetation is more than compensated by the interlacing of the roots through the road-bed so that it makes a powerful resistance to the water which rushes down the slopes after the heavy rains. Many a serious injury to the road has been prevented by this mass of roots."