Prowling about Panama. George A. Miller
and twenty-five thousand passengers were transported across the Isthmus annually. In 1853 the high-water mark was reached, when sixty-six millions of dollars of gold were carried across to the Atlantic side and shipped to New York.
This sudden development of the pack train business brought to the Isthmus a horde of Chileans, Peruvians, Indians, and mixed breeds, among whom were the inevitable plunderers and spoilers. The trail was again marked by blood and treachery. Many an unhappy pilgrim lost his riches, and not a few lost their lives on the way. At last the authorities were aroused to the necessity of making safe this highway suddenly become so important to the world.
The year of the first gold rush saw the organization of the Panama Railroad Company. In 1846 three American business men organized under the present name and secured a concession from New Granada for forty-nine years with such conditions that no ship canal could be constructed across the Isthmus without the consent of the railroad company. When the name of New Granada was changed to that of Colombia, the time was extended to ninety-nine years. This concession in time came to be very valuable, and the French Canal Company found it necessary to buy out the Panama Railroad in order to secure control of the exclusive right of way across the Isthmus. Later, when the United States acquired the control of the French possessions in Panama, the Panama Railroad became one of the most valuable assets on the list. By conditions of the concession, this road was bound to pay to Colombia the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per year. After various transfers and deals this still holds in the form of the obligation of the Panama Canal to pay this sum annually to the Republic of Panama.
The story of the early construction days of the Panama Railroad are as exciting as those of the Morgan Pirates, with a far better outcome. Labor troubles were many and bitter, and it became necessary to hold men in jail until they were willing to work. The attractions of the California gold fields were too much for the cupidity of men who saw daily pack trains loaded with gold from the Eldorado of the Northwest passing their wretched hovels and taunting them with visions of easy riches. But the work proceeded, and after interminable troubles with the black swamp between Aspinwall (Colon) and Gatun, the road was finished as far as Gatun in the year 1850. In 1855 the line was finished to Panama and the romantic career of the most prosperous short railroad in the world was well under way.
Charges for freight and passenger travel were enormous in the early days of the road. The fare was fifty cents per mile, with all baggage extra. Freight was carried across the Isthmus for twenty-five cents per pound, but so terrible were the old pack-train conditions that the travelers of that day were more than willing to pay such prices for the luxury of crossing the Isthmus by the railroad.
At last the Colombian government took up the matter and the passenger rate was reduced. Ten cents per pound continued to be the freight charge for years. The road made vast profits, and by a combination of rates with the steamship companies maintained a monopoly of travel. A few years after the completion of the railroad the pack-train men and outlaws, deprived of their plunder by the road, became very active as brigands, and on one occasion perpetrated a riot that cost sixteen Americans their lives and brought the United States and Colombia to the verge of open rupture.
As far back as 1515 a German named Schoner drew a map of the American continents with a clear line for a canal through the Isthmus. In 1581 an actual survey was made for a canal, but nothing was done about it. In 1620 Diego de Mercado submitted a long report to Philip II, but the monarch turned it down, saying that since God had joined the continents together, it would be impious to try to separate them, and a death penalty was decreed for anyone so rash as to try to undo the works of God in this way. In 1827 an engineer was sent by Simon Bolivar, president of the New Granada federation, and a report was made commending the project of a combined rail and water route. In 1838 a French company aroused so much enthusiasm in the canal project that an expert was sent by the French government to look the ground over. He reported that a sea-level canal could be dug without going deeper than thirty-seven feet, but the idea was again abandoned. Two American investigations were made in 1866 and 1875, and about this time much interest was aroused in the then new Nicaragua project.
The popularity of the Suez Canal, successfully completed in 1869, led directly to the DeLesseps organization of the Panama Canal Company. Agitation began in 1875 and in the year following a right of way was secured, but with the Panama Railroad concession standing in the way.
The story of the work of the French Company, the New Canal Company, and the final completion of the work by the United States government, is told elsewhere.
Now that the trail of the sixteenth-century pirates has become the most famous inland waterway of the world, we can read with complacency the story of the wretched times during which the Isthmus was the scene of constant strife. Verily, Panama was not a very good place for sightseeing in those days. The prowlers of the infested jungles and blood-stained trails were not such as we would select as traveling companions to-day. If any modern prowler becomes despondent and is tempted to complain that the former days were better than these, let him read the story of Old Panama, and then consider conditions as they are on the Isthmus and the Zone to-day, and he will find food for reflection.
CHAPTER III
PICTURESQUE PANAMA
A Panamanian cart loaded with English tea biscuit, drawn by an old American army mule, driven by a Hindoo wearing a turban, drove up in front of a Chinese shop. The Jamaican clerk, aided by the San Blas errand boy, came out to supervise the unloading. The mule wriggled about out of position, a Spanish policeman came along and everybody got out and "cussed" the mule.
That is Panama, every day. Across the street is an Italian lace shop run by a Jew. Next door is a printery, operated by a Costa Rican. Just beyond is a French laundry conducted by a man from Switzerland, and on the next corner is a beautiful Chinese store where they sell everything from Japan. Cloisonné and lacquer and curious carvings, silks, embroideries, scientific instruments—they are all here. You can buy Canton linen, Hongkong brass, Nikko carvings, Hindoo embroidery, German cutlery, French microscopes, Canadian flour, New York apples, and California grapes all within a block. And the products of Central and South America are all about.
The street in front of the shops is full of Panamanians, Peruvians, Ecuadorians, Chileans, Colombians, and San Blas Indians, besides some representatives of every country of North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Canal Zone Americans walk past Yankee business men, and native police crowd the mestizos off the sidewalk.
Panama is a jitney town, and the honk of the never-silent horn punctuates the clang and dash of the trolleys and automobiles down a fifteen-foot street in a mad race to see which can get through first. Overhanging roofs nearly touch above blooming orchids and talking birds that scream across the narrow streets. Gloomy interiors and stumbling stairways lead up to spacious apartments and breezy balconies. Above are occasional roof-gardens. All the rooms have high ceilings, all the streets are paved, and all the kids wear clothes—sometimes.
There is no possible human shade or tint that is absent here. The Anglo-Saxons are white, more or less. The Jamaicans are black, mostly. The Panamanian is most often a soft and pleasing brown, done in a number of wholly unmatchable tints. And the natives from these many sunny countries round about are of every known color-tone, from chrome yellow to Paris green. This is the human kaleidoscope of the earth: shake it up and you will get a different result every time.
You may not like it, but you can never truthfully