THE PANAMA ROUTE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17944, 25 May 1920, Page 2

THE PANAMA ROUTE.

BY TEH DEAN Off Dotkdih. Specially written for tho Otago Daily Times. As a practicable waterway ' far ships the Panama Uanal has been open to tho commerce of tho world since 1913; tho first passage by an ocean-going vessel was in November of that year. Thoro was followed an increasing movement of traJlio, East ami West, interrnplfcd only by an occasional land-slide blocking the channel Tho Times of March 27 reports an incident of tin's kind: — Tho Panama correspondent of tho Assorted Press says that doubt is entertained there as to whether a oluinuel sufficiently deep to permit of tlio passage of H.M.ti. Renown can bo cleared in tlio Culebra Cut, where a landslide occurred on March 20, by Tuesday next, when the Princo of Wales is expected to arrive. Over 20 ships are still held up. As a result of Saturday's slide an islet 50lt wide and 3ft high is now visible abovo tho channel. Tho Panama Canal, bo it understood, is as much a bridge as a canal. At Suez, in order to connect tlio waters of tlio Red fckja and tho Mediterranean there needed only 1 a trench scooped in the sand of a flat and empty desert. D© Leaseps, who triumphed at Suez, faced a totally diiiorent problem in tho tangle of hills and gullies, Uino-lo clod, that mado tlio Isthmus ot Paiioma. Yet De Lessops might have won through but for tho mosquito. I havo heard a returned army doctor say at a lecture in Dunedin that wo might have taken Uallipoli but for the flics. Camp dysentery, persistently reducing our fighting sfa*ngth, wo, due to tho plague of flies. Do Lessens was,beaten at Panama by tlie mosquito, not by engineering difficulties. Where Do Lessens failed the Americans succeeded by first beating the mosquito . The f«*W*° beaten, and . with it mabna . fever the Americans proceeded to the dominant feature of their engineering solution as wo see it to-day-the holding up of the Chagres River, thereby <™*« n & ™M way across the Isthmus, a lake nofy^ - a Tvefv\br^oft^S. lake the canal ascends from each extremity b v a scries of looks, step after step. On tho teet. ."""J ; ~ cm {eet channel would little wider than the work en . servo; of an incompact during. ? ut rubbish, material, loose irook and VOI j that beamed; ft has be« can a lasting elope be iornua, , Stan. l,m?«* to V i. Am.ri»» ternl„ " coiicMion from the BepuM.c of th y o Canal Zone by Panama followed in natural political sequence. I he £one is being fortified; no settlement of any lund k "Xwcd, ana the native population has been swept out. The Canal Zone is a strict American preserve. . , Of lasting and world-wide interest is the hvK enio revolution. Here the .Americans score English and Italian research had demonstrated that the. guilt of ffoncatmjj or transmitting malaria and s cUow fever must be charged against the anopheles, a S-flying mosquito. Of. makr.n.and vellow fever tho Panama region seemed tht native habitat. ThD French adventure m canal-building, lavish of money and of lives, had in effect succumbed to these diseases. Tho Americans began by declaring war on ■the mosquito. Not only were official building hospital verandahs, and the dwellings of the'staff wired against insect intrusion, but kerosene without stint was sprinkled about mosquito haunts and breeding places. In result, malaria and yellow fever have well nigh ceased from troubling, 10-day, passing through the Canal, you see here and tnere the negro sprinkler at. work, hose in Hand and can strapped on his back, irrigating the banks with kerosene. J3ut although the jungle vegetation is sometimes almost within touch you never see a mosquito. It was on a day m early December that I went through. The distance from sea to sea is 40 miles. My. recollections are of brilliant skies, a pure air, a sun not oppressive, and a few crowded hours. Arriving from New Zealand, you ship anchors off Panama City, a huddle of white walls and red roofs, fronted by old sea walls and decayed fortifications. Strangely twisted is the neck that unites tho two American continents. Panama City on the Pacific side is in longitude 79.29 W. Colon, on the Atlantic side, is in 79.52 W.— that is, further west by 23 miles. We have a"* similar geographical paradox in New Zealand. Dunedin and Hokitika are East Coast and West Coast respectively. . Yet Dunedin is further west than Hokitika. I suspect that few Dunedin people know it. Balboa, at the mouth of the Canal, a few miles from Panama City, perpetuates the name of th© first European who sighted the Pacific (September 25, .1513)— Vasco Nunez de Balboa, a Spanish military leader and venturesome explorer. Keats, in his sonnet on The Reading of Chapman's Homer, has it otherwise: Then felt I like eome watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Oortez, when with eagle eyes He stared at th© Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise, Silent, upon a peak in Darien." Keats is wrong. Stout Cortez was a generation later, tho scene of his doings und misdoings Mexico, not the Isthmus. At Balboa you are boarded by the Canal pilots—two of them, smart-looking Americans, in their tropic "whites"—Panama being within lOdeg. of the Equator; also by a boatload of tropic blacks—negroes, to handle the ship whilst going through, natives of Barbadoes, from which British island most of the coloured labour employed in building the Canal was drawn. Entering the channel, tho ship proceeds for a ■■ time under her own steam. On high ground, distant from tho banks, are builchngß of tho American Administration —offices and bungalows, handsome, well-kept, in orderly gardens. A galloping mule team goes past. There are glimpses of a tov railway—Colon to Panama, a railway dating from 1855. The channel narrows; the first lock shows up ahead; steam is rung off, and you are towed into tho lock by electrio motors, two on each bank, running on cog rails. The gates close behind; the water is admitted, where or how you do n«t sec; inch by inch, without a tremor, the great ship rises, and, having reached the new level, is towed out into tlio channel beyond. All tho processes of the lock are operatedt by electricity, and the working is so smooth, there is so little noiso or fuss, that vou almost miss the wonder of it. That the concrete walls of the lock are 50ft through at the base, that the steel gates are 7ft thick at tho top, and that you might drive a car across—theso facts fail to impress you. Nor does it seem strange that at one end of the Canal you aro lifted 85ft above the level of the Pacific and at the other end aro lot down again 85ft to tho level of the Atlantic. The miraculous- is so deftly done as to seem the natural, and you are more than ever persuaded with Huxley that "miracles do not happen." Having passed the ascending group of locks and the Culebra Cut, you come to' tho artificial lake and 24 miles of open steaming. Fairy islets, heavy with tropio foliage, dot this inland sea, and if you are in luck you may see a crocodile, or an alligator— which is which I do not know; but on tho map the Chagres River is also named the River of (>c>codiles. The lake crossed, tho descending lock system lets you down to Colon and the level of tho Atlantic. It is now dark, but no timo is lost. The ship coals during tho night and puts to sea at daylight. There is tradition of. a New Zealand service to Panama that lived and died half a century &S 0 - I put H; no higher than tradition ; accurate information havo I none, nor means of getting any. As an alternative to sailing ships and Cape Horn, the attempt to reach England by way of Panama may havo looked feasible, though there was no canal, and though only poor steamers \vere available. In those days we were iised to poor steamers. The Melbourno. service by Ilobairt and Bluff was carried on by M'Meokan Blackwood's Alhambra, Gothenbsrg, Omeo, and the like, with their Itard-bitteh skippers. Given a month or six weeks, th© old Alhambra could havo churned her way comfortably to Panama; it is a fine-weather passage (done now in 20 c'-to); most part

of tho way a whale boat might cross. But, aftor landing on tho isthmus, passengers for England were to "make their own way,"—that is, woro loft to tho doubtful chances of tho Mosquito Coast and tho Caribbean Sea, and of getting forward by an American coaster or a British West In<liaman. The Panama service of 50 years ago was a foredoomed experiment To-day, tho canal changes everything, and for New Zoalandors the new route to England will become tho favourite route. It is shorter than any other; it is less expensive; to people who would avoid the fatigue of intwposwl railway travel and transhipments it offers comfort. Coal—or rather the want of it—is a difficulty, but a difficulty for all routes alike. The vessel in which I travelled—a powerful ship of 12.000 tons, with twin propellors—seldom achieved more than 12 of the 14 knots, of which—according to tho chief engineershe was capable. Tho reason—poor coal. Leaving Wellington, she brought away 70 tons of loose slack on her main deok. " I thought I had better Uko it to help out the bunkers," said tho captain, apologising to himself; "it was the best I could do." Colon is a great coal depot, but stocks were low; coal sufficient to take the ship to England was not to be bought for money. American coal, usually had at Newport News, was ruled out by a colliery strike. T hero remained only tho resourco of Canadian coal, and for that a detour was new.ssa.ry to Capo Breton' Island, north of Nova Scotia. One would gladly believe theso difficulties temporary and soon to pass Tho earth holds coal enough for all tho uses of this generation, and of others to follow. The real scarcity m of honest men to mine it.