PANAMA CANAL ZONE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19384, 20 July 1926, Page 11

PANAMA CANAL ZONE.

A MODERN WONDER. TRIUMPH OF AMERICANS. "AUDACIOUS EFFICIENCY." BY GEORGE OSBORXE. Unprejudiced travellers through the Panama Canal will readily give the palm to Americans for engineering pluck and skill. The canal, surely is one of the wonders of the modern world, but evokes regret that the French who began this impressive undertaking were forced to relinquish it. They deserved better treatment at the hands of the Fates. Mute witnesses to their courage and enterprise in the form of dredges and hopper barges lie up on the hot mud at Panama, slowly rusting to pieces, the ruins haunted by alligators. In the jungle, enmeshed and smothered in vines and dense vegetation, lie locomotives, trucks and cranes, just left on the rail. Venomous things creep in and out of them and all over them. On the great Culebra Cut, the main cause of engineering anxiety to-day, the French deeply excavated miles of treacherous rocks and soil. All this for nought! But it would be wrong to assume from this that the Americans merely reaped where, the French had sown. The greatest obstacle to the achievement of thfr task the French had set themselves was yellow fever. The mosquito bearing this disease was answerable for the deaths of thousands of the workers, and largely responsible for the abandonment of the stupendous undertaking. The Americaus, before beginning constructive work, first attacked yellow fever—and vanquished it. They still keep it over the five-mile line of the Zone. 1 am informed that in this, their success is attributable to the researches and co-operation of an English biologist. At the Pacific Portal. The traveller from New Zealand is brought face to face at the Pacific, portal of the canal with the audacious efficiency of the Americans. The canal is an audacious work, its management efficient. All of a sudden the vel'dant coastline and islets and the distant sea front of the Spanish city of Panama, the emerald sea and the. silvery flying fish are left behind at a few'turns of the steamer's screw, and Balboa opens up. Steel and concrete structures dominate the landscape. Gigantic coal staithes brow-beat the steamer her berth. Vessels, 1 was told, are here bunkered at a speed that makes the. man-and-basket method appear antiquated, clumsy, and uneconomic. Iridescent patches of spilled oil fuel overspread the muddy waters; the rattle of pneumatic drills, the clang of a boiler shop, the hum of machinery, are heard in Balboa. Strange bird cries break in now and again and phalanxes of pelicans pass noisily overhead: shags in wedgeshaped companies fly swiftly out to sea. All fancies woven around conquistadores, pirates, slaves, pieces of eight, and "rich ships of Acapulco " are put to flight by the clangour of engineering at Balboa dry dock. The Line of Demarcation. Now the canal and five miles on either side of it is United States territory, and is called the Zone. It bisects the Republic of Panama. As the Government of Mhe country was well paid for the land acquired by the United States, it has nothing to complain about. But in this arrangement jthe citie§ of Panama and Cristobal were excluded from the Zone. The former, anyway, is just where the fivemiles demarcation ends; the latter is isolated in the Zone —a very " wet " oasis in a positively, inexorably " dry " area. At Balboa and Ancon otti sees a white line across the street, and in some streets down the centre. Rudolph Valentino (surely cousin to him, if not himself) was my taxi driver. " Here you can get a drink," he said, turning round in his seat. " Zis place out of Zone." He'seemed hurt when I ordered, "Drive on!" But I wondered, as Rudolph drove on, what would happen to a man astride that white line if he held a bottle of whisky in his, hand. Clearly it would depend upon which hand. The American citizen can (and many of them do) carry as much liquor 0%-er into the Zone as his alimentary system can accommodate; but he knows better than to try to get it over in any other container. - Well Laid-oat Town. Panama city without the canal would be in the one-horse category of towns. The canal has " made " it. Rudolph Valentino, were 1 to let him, would roll his taxi x into certain quarters which have been considerably enlarged and extended since-the canal opened for business. But I was absorbed in the vivid contrast between Nordic and Latin civic ideals, as seen when comparing the Zone lay-out and administration. In Balboa and Ancon are wide, asphalt streets, generously lighted, scrupulously clean. Pretty gardens, all open to the street, front the roomy, airy houses of the Americans. A great Y.M.C.A.—a well-appreciated boon this; a beautiful new Gothic Union Church; a palatial restaurant with excellent service and prices written large and definite; a wonderful hospital; comfortable clubs; these are some of the amenities of the Zone at Balboa and Ancon. Art and utility have, gone hand and hand there wherever practicable. From Lock to Lock. The passage of the ship from lock to lock and through the canal is one of the most fascinating experiences of travel; but it is all too short. One may leave Balboa at six in the morning and be out into the Caribbean Sea by two in the. afternoon. Alligators, they say, swarm in the muddy creeks meandering through the mangroves edging the canal and lake, but I saw none. Negro dredge | hands I saw catching fish, resembling ! Auckland mullet. The scenery indeed is very much like the North of Auckland, where tidal creeks, as at Matakana and Mahurangi, are fringed with mangroves merging into dense bush, only the green is rather more vivid in the canal. The configuration of the country is very similar, too, with hills from 100 ft. to 600ft-. high. The colours of this soil are almost identical—pale Vandyke brown, burnt sienna, ochres, red and yellow. Past volcanic activity is evident everywhere. It is all one long entrancing panorama. Great ships from many parts of the world pass in state toward the Pacific, some for Chili and Peru, some for California and Alaska, others for China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. At Darien—and what romance is conjured up by that name—three new lofty wireless towers stand, their tops connected by a network of aerials. The Panama-Colon express train dashes by in the distance. Gatun locks should bring this wonder story of the canal to a fitting close, for passing through them into Limon Bay the ship heads out straight for the open i sea.