THE PANAMA CANAL.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 8 September 1913, Page 4

THE PANAMA CANAL.

It was reported from America a few days ago that the last barrier at the Pacific end of the Panama Canal had been blown away. The dredges are now at work on the last stage at the Atlantic end, and when their work I there is finished, the canal will be ready for ships to come and go through it. The day on which the first successful passage is completed will, supposing the canal to remain thoroughly navigable, be one of high importance to the whole world, in consequence of the great commercial results which are confidently expected to follow, though there are critical observers who ha\ re doubts in this connection. Some of these doubts are due to uncertainty with respect to the permanent workableness of the canal itself, while others are associated with expectations in connection with aircraft. At present, however, it appears to be visionary in a high degree to think of the world's commerce being carried with airships instead of great ocean-going steamers, and if the canal itself endures as, its contractors intend, and all hope it may, its service to commerce must assuredly bo great. Nor will trade be the only thing to benefit; for the canal will add extensively to the great scenic wonders which are within the reach of man's enjoyment. Those who pass through the Suez Canal see notihng but desolate wastes of sands and clay, but in the case of Panama the experience will be of quite another kind. Mr James Bryce, some time British Ambassador at Washington, and not long since a touring sojourner in New Zealand, describes, in a recently written book what it is that the voyager through the canal will see during the ten or twelve hours of his passage from ocean to ocean. "The level light of the fiery tropic dawn will fall on the houses of Colon as he approaches it in the rnorning 2 when vessels usually arrive. When his ship has mounted the majestic staircase of the three Gatun locks I from the Atlantic level, he will glide slowly and softly along the waters of a broad lake which gradually narrows towards its head, a lake enclosed by rich forests of that velvety softness one sees in the tropics, with vistas of forest-girt islets, stretching £ar off to right and left among the hills, a welcome change from the restless Caribbean Sea which he has left. Then the mountains will close in upon him, steep, slopes of grass or brushwood rising two hundred feet above him as he passes through the great Cut. From the level of the Miguel lock he will look southward down the broad vale that opens on the ocean flooded with the light of the declining sun, and see the rocky islets rising, between which in the twilight his course will lie out into the vast Pacific." Thus, as Mr Bryce adds, the voyager "will be for a few hours in the centre of a verdant continent, floating on. smooth waters, shut off from sight of the ocean behind and the ocean before, a short, sweet present of tranquility between a stormy past and a stormy future." So there is real romance, as well as marvellous reality, to be looked forward to as a consequence of the canal's completion.